It is commonly said that we use only ten percent of our brain. The Rockefeller neuroscientist reveals this to be a misconception.

Question: Is it really true that we only use 10% of our brains?

Marcelo Magnasco: I should really research the origin of the ten percent of the brain meaning which is widely repeated many places. I don’t know exactly what the original statement was referring to but probably it was referring to the fact that the neurons in the brain, the neurons in the cortex of the brain fire sparsely in the sense that they are not active all the time sending electrical impulses, they fire at much lower rates than their you know than they would be capable of otherwise and but this does not mean that they are not in use all the time. Namely a neuron being silent means something as opposed to not meaning anything and therefore I really have no idea what it would mean to say we are only using ten percent of the brain. As far as the way anybody uses most of their brain most of the time, you know I don’t know exactly how.