The “10% brain” Myth

Let me state this very clearly:

There is no scientific evidence to suggest that we use only 10% of our brains.

It is quite remarkable that a handful of ideas from the field of neuroscience spread like wildfire through the popular media, thereby becoming part of our culture and worldview, while other ideas remain neglected, known only to a small group of experts. Since I was little, I always heard that humans use only 10% of their brains. To me, this idea agreed with the age-old notion that we as humans have great potential. Years later, I learned the 10% myth most likely arose from a misunderstanding (or misrepresentation) of neurological research in the late 19th century or early 20th century.

The popular notion that large parts of the brain remain unused, and could subsequently be “activated”, is not based on scientific theory. Several books, films, and short stories have been written closely related to this myth. They include the novel “The Dark Fields”, and its film adaptation “Limitless” (claiming 20% rather than the typical 10%), as well as the 2014 film “Lucy”, all of which operate under the notion that the rest of the brain could be accessed through use of a drug. Lucy, in particular, depicts a character who gains increasingly godlike abilities once she surpasses 10%.

Technology that Helps Quadriplegic Move Hand With His Mind

For the first time ever, a quadriplegic man has moved his hand using his own thoughts.

Ian Burkhart, a 23-year-old who became paralyzed after a diving accident four years ago, is the first patient to try out Neurobridge, which reroutes brain signals. Neurobridge works as a kind of neural “bypass,” taking signals from the brain, rerouting them around the damaged spinal cord and sending them directly to the muscles, according to its developers, including doctors at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and researchers from Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio.

Obedience to Authority (Review of Psychology Classics)

Book Title:  Obedience to Authority (1974)  by Stanley Milgram

In 1961 and 1962, a series of experiments were carried out at Yale University. Volunteers were paid a small sum to participate in what they understood would be ‘a study of memory and learning’.

In most of the experiments, a white-coated experimenter took charge of two of the volunteers, one of which was given the role of ‘teacher’ and the other ‘learner’. The learner was told he had to remember lists of word pairs, and if he couldn’t recall them, the teacher was asked to give the person, who was strapped into a chair, a small electric shock. With each incorrect answer, the voltage rose, and the teacher was forced to watch as the learner moved from small grunts of discomfort to screams of agony.

What the teacher didn’t know was that there was actually no current running between his control box and the learner’s chair, and that the volunteer was in fact an actor who is only pretending to get painful shocks. The real focus of the experiment was not the ‘victim’, but the reactions of the teacher pressing the buttons. How would they cope with administering greater and greater pain to a defenseless human being?

The Milgram experiment is one of the most famous in psychology. Here we take a look at what actually happened and why the results are important.

Expectations and reality

If you are like most people, you would expect that at the first sign of genuine pain on the part of the person being shocked, you would want the experiment halted. After all, it is only an experiment. This is the response Milgram got when, separate to the actual experiments, he surveyed a range of people (psychiatrists, graduate students, psychology academics, middle-class adults) on how they believed the subjects would react in these circumstances. Most predicted that the subjects would not give shocks beyond the point where the other subject asked to be freed. These expectations were entirely in line with Milgram’s own. But what actually happened?

Most subjects were very stressed by the experiment, and protested to the experimenter that the person in the chair should not have to take any more. The logical next step would be then demand that the experiment be terminated.

In reality, this rarely happened.

Despite their reservations, most people continued to follow the orders of the experimenter and inflict progressively greater shocks. Indeed, as Milgram notes, “…a substantial proportion continue to the last shock on the generator”. This is even when they could hear the cries of the other subject, and even when that person pleaded to be let out of the experiment.

Why good leaders make you feel safe…

What makes a great leader? Management theorist Simon Sinek suggests, it’s someone who makes their employees feel secure, who draws staffers into a circle of trust. But creating trust and safety — especially in an uneven economy — means taking on big responsibility.

Fascinated by the leaders who make impact in the world, companies and politicians with the capacity to inspire, Simon Sinek has discovered some remarkable patterns in how they think, act and communicate. He wrote Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action to explore his idea of the Golden Circle, what he calls “a naturally occurring pattern, grounded in the biology of human decision making, that explains why we are inspired by some people, leaders, messages and organizations over others.” His newest work explores “circles of safety,” exploring how to enhance feelings of trust and confidence in making bold decisions. It’s the subject of his latest book, Leaders Eat Last.

Hacking The Brain With Electricity — Don’t Try This At Home

by Amy Standen (Re-post from NPR)

It’s the latest craze for people who want to improve their mental performance — zapping the brain with electricity to make it sharper and more focused. It’s called “brain hacking,” and some people are experimenting with it at home.

The idea’s not completely crazy. Small jolts of electricity targeted at specific areas of the brain are used to treat diseases like epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease.

Reason that we have a brain?

Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert starts from a surprising premise: the brain evolved, not to think or feel, but to control movement. In this entertaining, data-rich talk he gives us a glimpse into how the brain creates the grace and agility of human motion.

Math in Your Brain

Among the 100 million or so nerve cells in the brain, it turns out there is a group dedicated to making sense of numbers.

No one is born knowing their 1, 2, 3’s or A, B, C’s. However, the brain clearly handles these uniquely human but culturally varied types of knowledge differently. Many people, for example, are far stronger in one area or another, showing a propensity for verbal skills over numerical ones or vice versa.

What is “Accelerated Learning”?

Accelerated Learning is an advanced inter-disciplinary teaching and learning method.  Based on the latest brain research, accelerated learning is a systematic approach that can enhance both learning efficiency and effectiveness while reducing training time and cost.  Accelerated learning is based on the way people naturally learn.  This methodology unlocks much of the human potential for learning that has been left largely untapped by other conventional learning methods.  Many of today’s leading organizations and educational institutions are benefiting from Accelerated Learning’s powerful principles.

“How we decide” by Jonah Lehrer (Book review)

Throughout History it is believed that a person who doesn’t involve emotions in decision making process tend to make better decisions. However, recent studies showed that emotions indeed play vital role in decision making process. How We Decide is a book about decision making process and How we can make better decisions by conditioning our brain. This book is written on the premise that decision making is amalgamation of art and science. A good decision maker is not the one who makes decision based on pure logic but the one who uses right combination of feelings(emotions) and thinking(logic). How we decide also analysis different parts of brain and what respective role they play in our thought process.

Brain wiring…is it really a no-brainer?

Scans reveal astonishingly simple 3D grid structure — NIH (USA)-funded study

It is no secret that I believe in a Creator; and every part of our body reflect a design-intent. I suppose is partly why I am so in loved with the brain – so complex that we don’t understand it fully, yet so beautiful in structures with sometimes amazing and surprising simplicity.

The brain appears to be wired more like the checkerboard streets of  Chicago downtown than the curvy lines of childish drawings. It is suggested by a new brain imaging study with the most detailed images, to date, reveal a pervasive 3D grid structure with no diagonals, say scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health.