The assertion that the human brain works at 10% (5%, 3%) is an old, completely false and completely indestructible myth. Let's figure out where it came from.
In the middle of the last century, it was completely incomprehensible how a person thinks (now this is also incomprehensible, but at a different level). But a few things were known - for example, that the brain is made up of neurons and that neurons can generate electrical signals.
Some scientists then believed that if a neuron generates an impulse, then it works, and if it does not generate, then it is "lazy." And then someone came up with the idea to check: how many neurons in the whole brain "work", and how many - "beat the thumbs up"?
There are several billion neurons in the brain, and it would be sheer madness to measure the activity of each of them - it would take many years. Therefore, instead of studying all neurons in a row, scientists examined only a small part, determined the percentage of active among them and assumed that this percentage is the same throughout the brain (this assumption is called extrapolation).
And it turned out that it “works”, that is, generates impulses, only an indecently small percentage of neurons, and the rest are “silent”. From this, a slightly straightforward conclusion was drawn: silent neurons are idlers, and the brain works only for a small part of its capabilities.
This conclusion was absolutely wrong, but since at that time it was customary to "correct nature", for example, turn rivers back, irrigate deserts and drain the seas, the idea that brain work can also be improved, stuck and began its triumphant march through the newspaper pages and magazine spreads. Even now, something like this is sometimes found in the yellow press.
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How the brain works roughly
And now let's try to figure out how everything is in reality.
The human brain is a complex, multilevel, highly organized structure. What is written below is a very simplified picture.
There are many areas in the brain. Some of them are called sensory - they receive information about what we feel (well, say, touching the palm). Other areas are motor, they control our movements. Still others are cognitive, it is thanks to them that we can think. The fourth are responsible for our emotions. Etc.
Why don't all the neurons in the brain turn on at the same time? It's very simple. When we are not walking, the neurons that start the walking process are inactive. When we are silent, the neurons that control speech are “silent”. When we hear nothing, the neurons responsible for hearing are not fired. When we do not experience fear, the "fear neurons" do not work. In other words, if neurons are not needed at the moment, they are inactive. And that's great.
Because if it were not so … Let's imagine for a second that we can excite ALL our neurons at the same time (our body simply cannot bear such a mockery for more than a second).
We will immediately begin to suffer from hallucinations, because sensory neurons will make us experience absolutely every possible sensation. At the same time, motor neurons will launch all the movements that we are capable of. And cognitive neurons … Thinking is such a complex thing that there is hardly a single person on this planet who can tell what will happen if all cognitive neurons are simultaneously activated. But suppose for the sake of simplicity that then we begin to think simultaneously all possible thoughts. And we will also experience all possible emotions. And much more will happen, which I will not write about, because there simply will not be enough space.
Let us now look from the outside at this creature, suffering from hallucinations, twitching from convulsions, simultaneously feeling joy, horror and rage. It doesn't look like a creature that has improved its brain to 100% efficiency!
On the contrary. Excessive activity for the brain is not good, but only harmful. When we eat, we do not need to run, when we sit at the computer - we do not need to sing, and if, while solving a problem in mathematics, we think not only about it, but also about the birds outside the window, then this task is unlikely to be solved. In order to think, it is not enough to THINK about something, you still have to NOT THINK about everything else. It is important not only to excite the "necessary" neurons, but also to inhibit the "unnecessary" ones. A balance is needed between arousal and inhibition. And the violation of this balance can lead to very sad consequences.
For example, a serious illness of epilepsy, in which a person suffers from seizures, occurs when the excitement in the brain "outweighs" inhibition. Because of this, during a seizure, even those neurons that should be silent at this second are activated; they transmit excitation to the next neurons, those to the next, and a continuous wave of excitation goes through the brain. When this wave reaches the motor neurons, they send signals to the muscles, they contract, and the person begins to seize. It is impossible to say what the patient feels at the same time, since during the seizure the person's memory is lost.
How to make your brain work more efficiently
I hope you have already realized that trying to make the brain work better by firing all the neurons in a row is hopeless, and even dangerous. However, you can “train” your brain to work more efficiently. This, of course, is a topic for a huge book (and not even one), not a small article. Therefore, I will only talk about one way. You have to start from afar.
When a small child is born, the number of neurons in his brain is even greater than that of an adult. But there are almost no connections between these neurons, and therefore a newborn man is not yet able to use his brain correctly - for example, he practically cannot see or hear. The neurons of his retina, even if they sense light, have not yet formed connections with other neurons in order to transmit information further, to the cerebral cortex. That is, the eye sees light, but the brain is unable to understand it. Gradually, the necessary connections are formed, and in the end the child learns to distinguish at first just light, then - the silhouettes of simple objects, colors, and so on. The more various things the child sees, the more connections form his visual pathways and the better that part of his brain that is connected with vision works.
But the most surprising thing is not this, but the fact that such connections can be formed almost exclusively in childhood. And therefore, if a child for some reason cannot see anything at an early age (say, he has a congenital cataract), then the necessary neural connections in his brain will never be formed, and the person will not learn to see. Even if, in adulthood, this person undergoes cataract surgery, he will still remain blind. Rather cruel experiments were carried out on kittens, which had their eyes sewn up when they were newborn. The kittens grew up without ever seeing anything; after that, their stitches were removed as an adult. Their eyes were healthy, their eyes saw light - but the animals remained blind. Having not learned to see in childhood, they were no longer able to do it in adulthood.
That is, there is some critical period in which the neural connections necessary for the development of vision are formed, and if the brain does not learn to see during this period, it will never learn this. The same applies to hearing, and, to a lesser extent, to other human abilities and skills - smell, touch and taste, the ability to speak and read, play musical instruments, navigate nature, and so on. A striking example of this is the "Mowgli children" who were lost in early childhood and were raised by wild animals. In adulthood, they still cannot master human speech, since they did not train this skill in their childhood. But they are able to navigate in the forest in a way that no one who grew up in civilized conditions can.
And further. You never know at what moment some skill acquired in childhood will "shoot". For example, it will be easier for a person who, in childhood, actively trained fine motor skills of hands, doing drawing, modeling, handicrafts, to become a surgeon performing delicate, precise operations, in which not a single wrong movement can be allowed.
In other words, if anything can make the brain work better, it is training, and training from the very childhood. The more the brain works, the better it works, and vice versa - the less you load it, the worse it will function. And the younger the brain, the more flexible and receptive it is. That is why small children are taught in schools, and not adult uncles and aunts. That is why children are much faster than adults who are able to adapt to new situations (for example, they master computer skills or learn foreign languages). That is why it is necessary to train your intellect from childhood. And if you do this, then nothing will prevent you from making great discoveries. For example, about how the brain works.
Vera Bashmakova