Neuromyths: What You Think You Know About Your Brain

and uh. And it just really gets crazy mind blowing when you start thinking about about ourselves as a brain and and and and think about the walls that are off and up when the brain tries to look at itself and tries to view itself and understand itself. WHOA, hold on a second, when you're shattering my brain right now.

But yeah, there's also often this this kind of cognitive blindness that it sets in when we when we're trying to understand what we are, I mean, you know, will, we're also guts, were also all these things we leave, as we've explained in another podcast. But are you telling about consciousness? Yeah, consciousness itself? YEA, what are we? What's going on in our mind? And so recently we actually decided, hey, let's go ask an expert on this, right, Yeah, we did.

We actually talked to neurosurgeon Dr T. Glenn Pate from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and we wanted to talk to him about one of the biggest myths out there about the brain, um, which is I'm sure everybody knows, is that that we only use ten percent of our brain. And he's actually been in brains, right, I mean he has been like elbow deep in brains before.

That's right. He yeah, he's he's, uh, he's I was about to use some sort of fly fishing metaphor, but I'm sure he doesn't have to wear fly fishing kids. But yeah, he's deep in there, and um, he's the guy to ask about this. So we do know that this was perpetuated by psychologist William James, who in the early nineteen hundred said that the quote the average person early achieved but a small portion of his or her potential. So I mean that seems you know, yeah, okay, that's

that's true, right, that's yeah. Everybody has great ideas, not everybody acts on them, that kind of thing, right, But somehow that got perverted into this, well, we really only used, you know, one part of our brain, which we know is not true? Yeah, or the tim percent right, that's the ten percent has been thrown out there. It's all over the place. Like sci fi and comic books love to run wild with it. You're always encountering that. It's like the normal. We don't normally we only use ten

percent of our brain. But you know, but in this summer movie, our hero will learn to use another five percent. Oh yeah, yeah, as as evidenced by the recent movie Limitless, right, Oh is there is there psychic craziness and that well, they take it. He takes a magic pill, the hero of that, and and then all of a sudden he's on He's firing on all cylinders and writing books overnight, like Stephen King in the eighties. Yeah, I know, right, we just need to tap into Stephen King's brain, see

what's going on? Tell us a lot more. Um. But so we do know three brain scans we can verify and say, no, it's not just one part of your brain working and everybody else is just hanging out up there being lazy. Um. Brain scans tell us that our brains are always active, with some parts more active than others depending on the activity that we're engaging in. Right, So we talked to Dr Patar said, please tell us why this continues to persist, And this is what he

had to say. You know, with every myth, you know, it gets repeated over and over again. Every generation will have it. It will change perhaps a little bit of a band or it's leaning, uh and it it's just perpetuated. And you know some of them, as you know, they're couch and what seems to be a little bit of common sense, right, um, but we need something to hold onto and if we do not understand um, our environment, Um, we need some to explain and the beliefs and in

the world around us. So you get to the brain, which is a land of mystery for a lot of us. The concept mind is still a mystery for us. So we think that, well, we're not using all of our brain, So, um, can we light up New York City with our brain because we're only using ten That's that's a myth. No, that's that's not the case at all, um, Because the brain is such an incredible mystery environment. In factually, hear

all the time. We hear it on television and radio and all the broadcasters will say, well, this is not this isn't brain surgery. Correct. You hear it every day on television, just the end of day. And I think because of the mystery of the brain not knowing what's what's going on with the rain, we have incredible expectations of it. Beth is absolutely incorrect, And I think it's an expectation appointing us to achieve or the brass that

we already have. And it's a way in which we cannot explain to all the mysteries of the brain that we hope the mysteries will be unrattled and once we reach our capacity, we will be able to, you know, become super people. Okay, So basically the comic books in

the sci fi films are just completely full of it. Yeah, yeah, and and and but it makes a really interesting point about this whole wish fulfill fantasy that we have, you know that if we could just it's sort of an excuse and a hope, right like, oh, yeah, I'm not getting to that book I meant to write overnight because I'm just not using all my brain. But maybe one day I could. Yeah. And and also the kind of like a sense of guilt too, I don't know, it kind of reminds me of there's sort of like an

original sin kind of a thing to it. You know. It's kind of like like there's here's this creature with all this potential, but oh, it's held back because it's lazy or something. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, but then again, not to bring up that movie Limitless, but I just keep thinking about it because again, it's such an interesting seductive idea. Who's in this somehow? Mr Bradley Cooper's in it? Um? I think for provert de Niro's in it. I haven't seen it. You thought I thought you'd loved it and

to keep talking about it. No, No, I just think it as an example of or we're talking about right now. I mean, I've I've read about the plot. Obviously, that's not all I know that he takes a superpill and becomes Superman. I'm not I'm not judging it. It's it's fine, okay. It's not that I don't like Bradley Cooper, Robert Denier. I just haven't seen it. All right, So the movie, though, it made me think, could you actually through science, could

could you create some sort of magic pill? And a lot of people have asked that question too since that movie came out, and we do know that researchers have been working on memory enhancing drugs for Alzheimer's patients and that a memory boosting molecule in the brain has been identified. But I mean, this is a far cry from enhanced

cognitive development or even know, super crazy cogitive thinking. Now when I go to the health food store, though they are countless um little bottles that claim to supply this kind of power. Well, I mean, you know that if you take riddle in right, you're gonna become more focused. So there are certainly things that you can do that can help you, but it's not gonna turn you into a super brain overnight. I'm sorry, And you don't need any more super brains over there. I need all the

brains I can get. I don't know, I don't know. So you know, once again, we talked to Dr pat about this. We wanted to say, well, okay, so we know why why this myth has persisted, But how has technology changed the way that we actually think about the brain. And he had this to say, It's it's allowed us to appreciate the anatomy the brain is better and as a surgeon, we thrive for anatomical consistency. You know, it's like compendix. It didn't have consistency, so it sort of

confused us for a while. But we look for m anatomical consistency as surgeons whom in or asurgence, and that's what I want. So the imaging allowed us to better appreciate the anatomy of an incredible orgy of the brain. And then from that we went once that further, we got into the function of the brain, and now we have functioning imaging, and this has given us better insight into the normal function of the brain, because if you don't know the normal, it's difficult to understand the abnormal.

And the imaging has allowed us to better appreciate the brain and normal and abnormal states, therefore allowing us to unravel some of those mysteries of diseases or at least begin to attack them before they announced themselves in such figure.

So neuro imaging has managed to actually really bust some of these, uh these myths we have right, we're actually see what's going on, or at least get get a visual um perspective on brain activity, what's going on, what's going going on, where it's going on, and how much activity is taking place. Well, and it's definitely busted some of the assumptions that we have about the way that

we operate. And one of the things that I was thinking about is this study about love and hate that we talked about love hating robots, and this was um research because the research scientists was thinking, you know what, there's this guy at work that I know he hates me, and so I want to see, um, what's going on, you know, with people when they hate. Because his his thought was, it's got to be some sort of impassioned, irrational thing that's happening, that part of the brain has

got to be connected to this emotion. But what he found is that it was actually um that hate is actually hanging out in the part of the brain that's very rational and calculating. So it makes us have just a different view on what exactly is going on or how we perceived the way that our behavior is being expressed around us. And then there's another thing too, that brain damage permanent. Right. We used always think, okay, well, if if you're getting a horrible accident or something happens,

you know it's permanent. But we know about neuroplasticity and that's the ability to bring to heal itself. And of course, if you've got extreme damages um then you probably do are are going to sustain permanent damage. But if you've got low level to mid level damage, your brain can actually kind of go in there and start reforming synaptic connections. It can't recover neurons that have been lost or damage, but those synaptic connections can be rebrown, which is really incredible.

I feel like that's one that that's still has has some has some spreading to do, because I feel like there's still that idea out there that if like I would have walked behind a horse and get kicked in

the head, whatever damage I've suffered would be permanent. I think that we've seen this in other areas too, and we've talked about this with the music and U Can Music Rebuild Your Brain in that podcast, and we we looked at Alzheimer's patients and people who have had strokes, and again we saw these examples of neuroplasticity where their parts of the brain could pick up and help you

to relearn words, for instance, as a stroke patient. A stroke patient might not be able to to speak, but she may be able to sing and eventually be able to speak again through music because that part of her brain is taken over the faculties, which is pretty interesting, right, Or or people who really learned to to speak via say, using their tongue to to to draw the letters on the roof of their mouths. I've heard of that as

a as an example of someone overcoming stroke. Yeah yeah, so, but like Dr Pat says, I mean, this is it's still very much a mystery to us, the brain. Um. But you know, we've got all of this exciting technology in front of us today that can really help us to better understand ourselves and maybe even consciousness, right, like what it means to be a conscious being or as sentient being just you know, not not nothing, No, but it's a that one's that one is on is one

of the uh, I don't know. It kind of feels like a Pandora's box at times. You know, I wonder the more we unlock about consciousness and the more we understand, you know, what we are and who we are? Uh? Do we do we stand the risk of demystifying ourselves too much. This presentation is brought to you by Intel, sponsors of Tomorrow UM I think I've mentioned it before.

There's a there's a quote from author Are Scott Baker who makes the argument that that consciousness is um It's it's like a coin trick and uh and if you explain the coin trick, then you can no longer see the magic. And in this scenario, we are the magic. UM. So I don't know. I think about this sometimes. Well, there's actually that We'll get to this in a little bit, but there's actually something called the Blue Brain Project that is exploring this this very idea. Who's in that is that? No, No,

this is an actual project that's going on. Oh this is the model. Yeah. Yeah. But before we talk about that, we wanted to talk with Dr Pete a little bit more about the future of neuroscience and as a neurosurgeon, what he would love to see. Let's find out technology has has prompted UM or the disease process has prompted, you know, the blossoming of technology. As soon as we get a handle on one item, there's always another question

to be answered. And so I'm always cautious to say I think as a as a physician, surgeon, UM, an educator, we always think that we're at at that the greatest point of discovery, UM, and at this time of our being we are that's the greatest thing, and one would

hope for marvelous things to come about. UM. The best thing I think we're gonna be looking at in the future is uh is uh is um at least with the brain is continued understanding and to define you know, pathology, how the brain responds to tumors, whether their primary tumors or their tumor on the outside of the brain is pushing on the brain. How the how the brain responds

to pathology. Execondly, I think the great thing that I would hope to see in my lifetime is the ability of the spinal cord and the brain to come about with as you put down the plasticity, the ability to

repair itself and every turn of functioning. To have a stroke patient UM as a dobbin he is very in fact, the ability to communicate or speak better the spinal cord injured patient who's uh, who's destined today to be on the ventilator, wheelchair, dependent for life and and rely upon others for all care, to be able to arise independently

from a chair. That's what I would hope. So I think that's that's actually I can see as a certain how he would really want to see the spinal cord and the brain be able to better talk to each other. Um and for eventually patients to be able to walk. It makes a lot of sense that that is what he's after right now. Um And and surely you know

we'll be making some good strides with that. But I was thinking, you know, we should probably talk a little bit about some existing technology right now as it relates to the brain. And we know that there's a portable m r I available, and we know that there's a MEG scanner, which is super cool. This was I believe this came out in the two thousand one, two thousand two something like that. There's only about a hundred of them in existence. But a MEG scanner is a magnetic anencephalography.

It's imaging technology that can non invasively detect brain electromagnetic activity lasting only milliseconds and the speed of communications in neural circuits, whereas other functioning brain imaging l fMRI I technology can only capture activity that last seconds or minutes,

and some involve radiation exposure. So this is this we talk about this a little bit about when we were talking about dogs and um people's connection to infants and puppies, and they actually put them in one of these mag scanners and within one seventh of a second they could detect that it was I believe it was the overallllle cortex was looking at these pictures of puppies and infants and lighting up and going nuts. So it just gives us a little a little bit more of a fine

tuning mechanism to look at the brain. And this is some of the technology that we was we discussed in the Eat Popcorn episode that could eventually lead to a situation where you could have advertisements reading your mind and seeing what your reaction is to various uh physical on that physical, visual or auditory stimuli. Yeah. Actually, and it

was Paul root will Be. He's the director of ethics at Emery University, and he was the guy that said, look, it is possible right now to beam light into your front cortex and that the receptors would get a reflection of that light, essentially scanning your brain and interpreting your thoughts as you concentrated on something. And that's why we brought it up in the eat popcorn podcasts because it was like, you know that that could be used in marketing so very easily. Yeah, I mean it could be

happening right now, who knows. Um, But I didn't want to talk a little bit more about the Blue Brain Project, which is a model of the brain. Yes, yes, not a Tom York song, not a Tom York song, and not a model of the brain like the little plastic one that comes out of the Visible Man skeleton right right, There's there's no plastic going on here. It was started in June two thousand and five and it's a ten year joint venture between IBM and ep f L, which

is short for Equal Polytechnique. I apologize for that. It was the best I could do there, and it's the main focus is to reverse engineer the brain. And they're building a detailed, realistic computer model of the human brain and it's one hundred trillion synapses. Yeah. So the first

phase of this was actually completed in two thousand and seven. Um. This is actually from the director of this project, and this quote is current technology is now allowing us to qualify that tabula rasa hypothesis which argues that our brains are a blink slate at birth and we only gain knowledge through experience. It's an idea that has permeated science

for centuries. There is no question that knowledge in the sense that we typically understand it, reading and writing, recognizing our friends, learning a language is the result of our experiences. But the ep f l's teams work demonstrates that some of our fundamental representations or basic knowledge is inscribed in our genes, which is like whoa, Okay, because neuro scientists

have been saying this for a long time. Okay, if you've if, um, if you have a d D or a d D h D. These are things that aren't necessarily things that came from your environment, that you acquired through your environment. So we should start looking at this and through neuroscience and ways to treat it, and start considering the person as a whole um, knowing that they

came prepackaged with some of these things, which is pretty cool. Um. And this is from ned City News there their articles called brain stimulation is a goal of the Blue Brain supercomputing project. Blue Brain can model components of the mammalian brain and precise cellular detail and simulate neuronal activity in three D. Soon blue Brain will be able to simulate a whole rat brain in real time. Wow, I know.

I mean that's been a personal dream of mine to live long enough to see a rat brain, you know, generated in your Yeah. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean the again, the project director, Henry Markham. I don't believe that said his name before, but Henry Markham, he has a really good Ted dot Com talk on this. He was basically saying, well, we can't use mice forever, and I don't know why. He thinks maybe we're going to run out of myce um, But for him, obviously it's just a better way to

look at the human brain. And so he thinks that this computer model is actually going to bear out a theory that the brain creates a version of the universe and then projects it like a bubble all around us. Yeah, so that that's the consciousness part, right, Well, that's pretty mind blowing right there. Yeah, it's crazy, and um, I mean it's basically basically like mathematics is animating our neurons

for us to look at. And Seed Magazine's article Out of the Blue says that if the project succeeds, it will have taken the self and turned it into something that we can see this sense of self and then will we be horrified will be enlightened? Well, I mean that's the whole thing, right, the magic trick. It's like the jig is up. I mean, do you is it what we thought it was? Or you know, do we

are we just these you know, freeasembled packages. I mean, does it really matter the environments you know that we're in and how much we learn from that or you know, it's that whole nature versus nurtural question. But John, you know, I don't think it's actually gonna answer it definitively. No, probably not. I mean, there's there's This is one of the things that we're gonna continue to chew on for quite some time. I feel like that the the technology

is going to improve tremendously. It's gonna give us even more tools to better analyze. But uh, it just feels like one of those things that we're just the more questions, more questions are going to come up with every answer. Well, and there's always been the philosophical aspect of it too, right, that the brain is the seat of the soul essentially um when in fact we know that our guts are telling us a lot our guts right now are telling us how we feel, you know, in an emotional sense,

like sending all sorts of signals. Um. So it's not just you know, the three pounds of gray matter sitting atop our next you know, doing everything. But it's certainly interesting that people are reverse engineering and looking at um, the seat of the soul, so to speak. Well, hey, let's move on to some listener mail then, all right, and this one from a listening by the name of Malachi.

Malachi gave us a rather long email and I don't I can't read it all, but um he picked up some some particularly mind blowing stuff from a pharmacology class that he was that he was a part of. And uh so, skipping a bit and getting right to the chase here he says, where this starts, getting into the area of blowing my mind, is that when you examine all the molecules that make up living things, they are

all left handed versions of molecules. All the amino acids in your body are composed of the l isomer form of that molecule. It appears that all of all life on Earth evolved from an original common ancestor that just happened to be using left handed amino acids, it would seem that it is pure chance that life evolved with the preference for left handed isomer's. After all, an organism made entirely from right handed amino acids could function. In theory, it would just be a mirror image down to the

molecular level of its counterpart, left handed version. Alien species in another world to be composed entirely of left me of right handed isomers. So yeah, that's pretty interesting. Yeah, thanks Malichai, And if you have anything mind blowing to share, or you have some thoughts on a recent episode, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. We're blow the Mind on both of those, and you can also drop us a note at Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of

other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes.