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What percentage of our brain do we actually use?

Paul Connolly finds out how much brain power we can access and engage.

On this week’s episode of More or Less we interrogate a widely circulated myth relating to how much of our brain power we can access and engage. Ever heard someone say, β€œYou know we can only use 10% of our brains, right?”. Well, they’re wrong. It’s the stuff of make believe and far-fetched movie plots. Science and evidence based research tells us so - and has, it turns out, been telling us so for decades…politely, if impatiently. So, then, if not 10%…what percentage of our brain do we actually use? From dark matter neurons to super-highway synapse and ghost cells that serve as inert echoes of our evolutionary past - with the help of two leading experts in the field, we crack open the figurative cranium of this debate and rummage around for the definitive truth.

Presenter: Paul Connolly
Producers: Jon Bithrey, Natasha Fernandes
Editor: Richard Vadon
Sound Engineer: Rod Farquhar

(Artificial intelligence brain network/Getty)

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9 minutes

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