Question

what would happen if you access 20 of your brain

Answer 1

Ha, this is the question which makes laugh. Sorry to insult you or to shatter your feelings, no, you can't use 20% or 100% of your brain.

The source of this myth is from a group of psychologists (William James interpretation was misinterpreted by journalist Lowell Thomas, then this “Lucy” movie) who studied the child prodigies and savants. The question is just like how much percentage of muscle I use compared to Arnold schwarzenegger. Both of us use the same muscle sets. But Arnold has trained his muscles to lift heavy [I am also training my muscles these days. Arnold watch ya]

Brain is the most energy efficient system, it consumes 25% of glucose and 20% of oxygen. Natural selection would have eliminated those parts of brain which were energy inefficient if we used only 20% of brain. There is a physiological process called Synaptic Pruning in which brain cuts away unwanted connections in the wiring between neurons.

Neurons are never OFF. They always maintain a resting potential of -70mV and this is a dynamic equilibrium. All the 100 billion neurons are always busy.

Brain has plasticity. Learning, training, exercise, diet are the key things that can fetch a smarter brain than current one. Nurture and habits have created prodigies.

As such it will be too difficult to measure brain capacity. Some pilot work from Allan Snyder’s lab has given confidence that, everyone has immense potential and it’s just like our muscles. Use it or lose it. Cognitive reserve of humans are amazing.

Functional imaging techniques and other imaging studies have revealed that all the areas in brain are active. It’s like a huge rock star city that never sleeps.