So, what % of your brain do you use?

[LazyGun]

Interesting article, exploring a few of the more common (mis) conceptions about our brains.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15619393

[rov1100]

I would think most of it. The reason I say this is because a person with Alzheimers loses a small proportion but soon becomes very incacipated

[DTCwordfan]

What's a brain? I have forgotten that.

[rowanwitch]

most of it at different times still being a female I only have 'skull brain' not lower spare brain to deal with

[DTCwordfan]

I did hear 95% unused - the rest going to keep the personal Starship Enterprise humming along - and if we could capture the usage of an extra 3% and particularly opening up the comms between left and right halves.....

[jomifl]

Seems like some experimentation is required, any volunteers?

[Old_Geezer]

I use all mine. Just not at full acceleration these days.

[mibn2cweus]

Row, I'm pretty sure I do at least 90% of my thinking with my 'spare' brain . . . at least when it's swollen.

[MarkRae]

This question is almost impossible to answer because there is no scientific method of measurement. All sorts of tests have been done with recording brain patterns in different conditions but they prove very little because we still have very little understanding of what is happening.

The latest "accepted wisdom" is that we can use and of the individual parts of our brain at any given time - just not at once.

What is fairly certain, though, is that we've had more or less the same brain capacity for the last 40,000 years or so. and that if any single part of the brain was not used at all then it would begin to reduce in size and eventually disappear due to evolutionary atrophy.

[MarkRae]

^^ any

[Elderman]

LazyGun : A scientist says: “In terms of complexity, an individual cell is nothing when compared with a system like the mammalian brain. The human brain consists of about ten thousand million nerve cells. Each nerve cell puts out somewhere in the region of between ten thousand and one hundred thousand connecting fibres by which it makes contact with other nerve cells in the brain. Altogether the total number of connections in the human brain approaches . . . a thousand million million.” adds: “The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event.” It had to have a designer and maker.

[mibn2cweus]

//The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event.” It had to have a designer and maker.//

One vital flaw in your 'logic' -

If complexity is the issue, then your prerequisite designer/creator did so without so much as the benefit of possessing a single cell, let alone a brain.
Perhaps you've got it all bass-ackwards? Perhaps your hypothesis would make more sense if you substituted 'god' for 'cell' -

The complexity of the simplest known type of god is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event.” It had to have a designer and maker.

- but then again . . . maybe not.

[Elderman]

One vital flaw in your 'logic' I think you don’t have a brain.

[LazyGun]

@Elderman - This is just a variant on the Intelligent Design Hypothesis. Ooh, its complex! they say - it could not possibly come about except through a designer they say.

This line of argument was first put about by Paley, back in the early 1800s. It has been shown to be untrue by Darwins work on the adaptation of living things to their environments.

There is plenty of biological and biochemical evidence showing the evolution of organs and molecules from more primitive precursors, which shoots down the argument that apparent design means a supernatural creator. A basic knowledge of medicine and anatomy should show you that there are plenty of systems within the body which, although they work well enough, are actually very poorly designed - further evidence of the absence of a supernatural creator.

[Elderman]

lazygun .....Ahh, but in your world, evolution means that man descended from .............Of course, evolution makes no such claim, but then the theory is probably a bit too complicated for you.

[LazyGun]

@Elderman The theory of evolution is far, far too complicated for you, self evidently. What is also self evident is your steadfast refusal to face facts, preferring to adhere to the tenets of religion rather than the evidence and the scientific fact.

[Elderman]

lazy........Your posts always make me laugh, even the incomprehensible ones, or the copy and pasted ones, or the unattributed ones, or the sanctimonious ones - Think that covers all of them?

[LazyGun]

@Elderman - They say that copying is the sincerest form of flattery. Its a pity you cannot generate an original comment of your own. Lacking in inspiration perhaps?