What percentage of brain capacity do I and You — Humans use?

Only 10%? is it right or just theory?

Nikunj Savaliya
9 min readFeb 7, 2022
brain use
Photo by Jesse Martini on Unsplash

We use all of our brains. This “only use 10% of our brain” thing is a myth. It’s not clear where it comes from, but generally speaking, the potential sources of that figure come from the very early days of neurology when we really didn’t know anything about how the brain works.

Now, it may very well be that we only make significant use of a fraction of our brains at any given moment. But there’s a good reason for that. The different parts of our brain aren’t interchangeable. Rather, they perform different functions related to language, pattern recognition, memory, moving limbs, regulating bodily functions, and so on.

Think of it as driving your car. At any given moment, you’ll be using the gas pedal or the brake, but not both. You’ll only sit on one seat at a time. You’ll use the radio or the CD player (or maybe, for more recent models, the line in from your phone), and so on. In short, you’re not using 100% of your car at any given moment, are you? And if you were to do so, it would be a disaster. You’d be leaning on the horn, trying to turn left and right at the same time, using all the gears from reverse to overdrive simultaneously, stepping on the brake and accelerator (while also turning on the parking brake), flashing the…

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Nikunj Savaliya

Hey, I am Nikunj, I love knowing & reading new things and I am also trying to write some of my own!