Question: How much of the brain do we fully use on a daily basis?

James Munro answered on 6 Mar 2019:

Hey there,

Despite the popular thing to say on TV or other media, the brain does not really work like this. Your brain is a living part of you so needs to be constantly doing things in order to say active. In fact, when you rest your brain is perhaps more “active” than when you are awake and doing things. This is called the “default mode network” – a complicated system in your brain that is only active when we are relaxing. Scientists think that this network is helping us remember things and putting the events of our day into context.

We cannot measure what percentage of our brain is doing anything at any one time – but on a daily basis I could safely say we use pretty much all of it. Brushing my teeth involves the motor cortex to move my arm and open my jaw. My frontal lobes help me decide what to make for breakfast. Neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) are sent from the brain to make me hungry and to tell me when I am full. I ehar the morning birdsong through my temporal lobes and see the sunrise with my occipital lobes. I feel happy thanks to my amygdala and all of these messages are mixed together into memory in a combination of all of these brain areas.

So if anyone says you only use 10% of your brain, I would be very skeptical of their training in neuropsychology…

Great question!