We only use 10% of our brain. Really? A neuroscience specialist challenges this preconceived idea in the show Couleurs Locales.
In reality, our brain organ is working at full capacity. “The brain itself is always working. It is working at 100%,” says Alexis Hervais-Adelman, assistant professor in the department of fundamental neuroscience at the University of Geneva.
And this is observed during scientific analyses. “Even in a resting state — asking a study participant to do nothing in an MRI scanner, for example — brain activity is constant. All areas of the brain are active one by one. This indicates that the brain never turns off,” explains the researcher.
A “rewiring” when learning
This idea of 10% use implicitly contains another, that of a strong potential for brain development. Don’t we have 90% left to exploit? With the right training or treatment, we could become super-humans. But this megalomaniac hope vanishes when we know that we are already permanently at the maximum…
That said, this does not mean that our brains always work in the same way and are incapable of transforming.
“When we learn something, it changes the way it is organized. What it consumes does not change. The question of how we can do more is rather linked to the plasticity of the brain itself, i.e. say how neural networks are organized. How this wiring is rewired according to the expertise that we develop through learning or by exercising a certain capacity. Once rewired, the brain continues to function at 100%. what he can do becomes different depending on the networks he has developed,” explains Alexis Hervais-Adelman.
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TV subject: Camille Rivollet
Web text: Antoine Michel
