Only use 10% of your brain? Shell wants you!

I noticed this advertisement in this week’s Economist, repeated on Shell’s “Global Technical Careers” website:

"You only use 10% of your brain"?  I find it surprising that a high tech company advertising for technical people should propagate this old myth.

...attempts to map out the cerebral cortex, the center of the higher mental functions, have not found large areas that don't do anything. The general view is that the brain is too small (just three pounds), uses too many resources (20 percent of body oxygen utilization though it accounts for just 2 percent of weight), and has too much to do for 90 percent of it to be completely comatose.

Funny – I’d have thought that a firm like Shell would want people who could use all their brains. Or perhaps it’s just the people in recruiting who only use 10% of their brains. Still, it’s good news for engineers with 90% less brain than their peers – a career awaits you at Shell. As the ad says – “make a difference”. Indeed.

Other resources:

Myths About the Brain: 10 percent and Counting from brain connection

There is no scientific evidence to suggest that we use only 10% of our brains from Dr. Eric H. Chudler

The Ten-Percent Myth from CSICOP

Comments

[BronzeDog]

I've run into plenty of people who only seem to use 10% of their brain. Then again, that presumes they have more brain to be used. Typically, when I repeatedly point out flaws in their arguments, they just repeat the same flaws over and over and over... What do they call it when you try the same thing multiple times and expect something different to happen?

[EoR]

This advertisement also appeared in the local paper this weekend here in Australia, to my dismay and bemusement. Certainly not a company I'd like to work for - they probably still think the Earth is flat.

[Ebonmuse]

My favorite answer to this silly claim: Have you ever heard of a person who was shot in the head and survived with no cognitive deficit because the bullet only damaged the 90% of his brain he wasn't using?

[quackquack]

Perhaps they want people with bigger brains ....

[impatientpatient]

Correct me if I am wrong, because I gave the book back to the library a couple weeks ago. While reading a book about the travels of Einsteins brain after his death, I found a piece of information that interested me. Apparently, Einstein had more glia than "normal" in certain areas of the brain. I did do some searching to find out more, as glia is interesting to me, for other reasons, and it does seem that glia, or the lack of it does in fact affect intelligence. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is a case in point. The brain is essentially bathed in poisons, that make glia unable to form properly. This was interesting to me as I have found out that glia can diminish during certain diseases, and learning and memory are affected by this. Glia was always thought just to be the glue of the brain and the garbage collector, but now it has been found to actually signal immune system chemicals like cytokines- TNF, the interleukins, etc... to start their work in the body. It is also found to have a role in MS which was only thought to affect neurons/axons. Any thoughts on this????

[Oblivious Boy]

Of course the 10 percent fallacy is derived from a misquote of the original statement:

"Only ten percent of people use their brain."

Hence they arrived at the ratio of critical thinkers/atheists to religionists.

[Paul]

Well, it certainly explains why gas is so expensive.