Top Ten Myths About the Brain

When it comes to this complex, mysterious, fascinating organ, what do—and don’t—we know?

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Brain myths
Repeated in pop culture for a century, the notion that humans only use 10 percent of our brains is false. Scans have shown that much of the brain is engaged even during simple tasks. (Allen Bell / Corbis)

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7. A conk on the head can cause amnesia.
Next to babies switched at birth, this is a favorite trope of soap operas: Someone is in a tragic accident and wakes up in the hospital unable to recognize loved ones or remember his or her own name or history. (The only cure for this form of amnesia, of course, is another conk on the head.)

In the real world, there are two main forms of amnesia: anterograde (the inability to form new memories) and retrograde (the inability to recall past events). Science’s most famous amnesia patient, H.M., was unable to remember anything that happened after a 1953 surgery that removed most of his hippocampus. He remembered earlier events, however, and was able to learn new skills and vocabulary, showing that encoding “episodic” memories of new experiences relies on different brain regions than other types of learning and memory do. Retrograde amnesia can be caused by Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury (ask an NFL player), thiamine deficiency or other insults. But a brain injury doesn’t selectively impair autobiographical memory—much less bring it back.

8. We know what will make us happy.
In some cases we haven’t a clue. We routinely overestimate how happy something will make us, whether it’s a birthday, free pizza, a new car, a victory for our favorite sports team or political candidate, winning the lottery or raising children. Money does make people happier, but only to a point—poor people are less happy than the middle class, but the middle class are just as happy as the rich. We overestimate the pleasures of solitude and leisure and underestimate how much happiness we get from social relationships.

On the flip side, the things we dread don’t make us as unhappy as expected. Monday mornings aren’t as unpleasant as people predict. Seemingly unendurable tragedies—paralysis, the death of a loved one—cause grief and despair, but the unhappiness doesn’t last as long as people think it will. People are remarkably resilient.

9. We see the world as it is.
We are not passive recipients of external information that enters our brain through our sensory organs. Instead, we actively search for patterns (like a Dalmatian dog that suddenly appears in a field of black and white dots), turn ambiguous scenes into ones that fit our expectations (it’s a vase; it’s a face) and completely miss details we aren’t expecting. In one famous psychology experiment, about half of all viewers told to count the number of times a group of people pass a basketball do not notice that a guy in a gorilla suit is hulking around among the ball-throwers.

We have a limited ability to pay attention (which is why talking on a cellphone while driving can be as dangerous as drunk driving), and plenty of biases about what we expect or want to see. Our perception of the world isn’t just “bottom-up”—built of objective observations layered together in a logical way. It’s “top-down,” driven by expectations and interpretations.

10. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
Some of the sloppiest, shoddiest, most biased, least reproducible, worst designed and most overinterpreted research in the history of science purports to provide biological explanations for differences between men and women. Eminent neuroscientists once claimed that head size, spinal ganglia or brain stem structures were responsible for women’s inability to think creatively, vote logically or practice medicine. Today the theories are a bit more sophisticated: men supposedly have more specialized brain hemispheres, women more elaborate emotion circuits. Though there are some differences (minor and uncorrelated with any particular ability) between male and female brains, the main problem with looking for correlations with behavior is that sex differences in cognition are massively exaggerated.

Women are thought to outperform men on tests of empathy. They do—unless test subjects are told that men are particularly good at the test, in which case men perform as well as or better than women. The same pattern holds in reverse for tests of spatial reasoning. Whenever stereotypes are brought to mind, even by something as simple as asking test subjects to check a box next to their gender, sex differences are exaggerated. Women college students told that a test is something women usually do poorly on, do poorly. Women college students told that a test is something college students usually do well on, do well. Across countries—and across time—the more prevalent the belief is that men are better than women in math, the greater the difference in girls’ and boys’ math scores. And that’s not because girls in Iceland have more specialized brain hemispheres than do girls in Italy.

Certain sex differences are enormously important to us when we’re looking for a mate, but when it comes to most of what our brains do most of the time—perceive the world, direct attention, learn new skills, encode memories, communicate (no, women don’t speak more than men do), judge other people’s emotions (no, men aren’t inept at this)—men and women have almost entirely overlapping and fully Earth-bound abilities.


1. We use only 10 percent of our brains.
This one sounds so compelling—a precise number, repeated in pop culture for a century, implying that we have huge reserves of untapped mental powers. But the supposedly unused 90 percent of the brain is not some vestigial appendix. Brains are expensive—it takes a lot of energy to build brains during fetal and childhood development and maintain them in adults. Evolutionarily, it would make no sense to carry around surplus brain tissue. Experiments using PET or fMRI scans show that much of the brain is engaged even during simple tasks, and injury to even a small bit of brain can have profound consequences for language, sensory perception, movement or emotion.

True, we have some brain reserves. Autopsy studies show that many people have physical signs of Alzheimer’s disease (such as amyloid plaques among neurons) in their brains even though they were not impaired. Apparently we can lose some brain tissue and still function pretty well. And people score higher on IQ tests if they’re highly motivated, suggesting that we don’t always exercise our minds at 100 percent capacity.

2. “Flashbulb memories” are precise, detailed and persistent.
We all have memories that feel as vivid and accurate as a snapshot, usually of some shocking, dramatic event—the assassination of President Kennedy, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, the attacks of September 11, 2001. People remember exactly where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, what they saw or heard. But several clever experiments have tested people’s memory immediately after a tragedy and again several months or years later. The test subjects tend to be confident that their memories are accurate and say the flashbulb memories are more vivid than other memories. Vivid they may be, but the memories decay over time just as other memories do. People forget important details and add incorrect ones, with no awareness that they’re recreating a muddled scene in their minds rather than calling up a perfect, photographic reproduction.

3. It’s all downhill after 40 (or 50 or 60 or 70).
It’s true, some cognitive skills do decline as you get older. Children are better at learning new languages than adults—and never play a game of concentration against a 10-year-old unless you’re prepared to be humiliated. Young adults are faster than older adults to judge whether two objects are the same or different; they can more easily memorize a list of random words, and they are faster to count backward by sevens.

But plenty of mental skills improve with age. Vocabulary, for instance—older people know more words and understand subtle linguistic distinctions. Given a biographical sketch of a stranger, they’re better judges of character. They score higher on tests of social wisdom, such as how to settle a conflict. And people get better and better over time at regulating their own emotions and finding meaning in their lives.

4. We have five senses.
Sure, sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch are the big ones. But we have many other ways of sensing the world and our place in it. Proprioception is a sense of how our bodies are positioned. Nociception is a sense of pain. We also have a sense of balance—the inner ear is to this sense as the eye is to vision—as well as a sense of body temperature, acceleration and the passage of time.

Compared with other species, though, humans are missing out. Bats and dolphins use sonar to find prey; some birds and insects see ultraviolet light; snakes detect the heat of warmblooded prey; rats, cats, seals and other whiskered creatures use their “vibrissae” to judge spatial relations or detect movements; sharks sense electrical fields in the water; birds, turtles and even bacteria orient to the earth’s magnetic field lines.

By the way, have you seen the taste map of the tongue, the diagram showing that different regions are sensitive to salty, sweet, sour or bitter flavors? Also a myth.

5. Brains are like computers.
We speak of the brain’s processing speed, its storage capacity, its parallel circuits, inputs and outputs. The metaphor fails at pretty much every level: the brain doesn’t have a set memory capacity that is waiting to be filled up; it doesn’t perform computations in the way a computer does; and even basic visual perception isn’t a passive receiving of inputs because we actively interpret, anticipate and pay attention to different elements of the visual world.

There’s a long history of likening the brain to whatever technology is the most advanced, impressive and vaguely mysterious. Descartes compared the brain to a hydraulic machine. Freud likened emotions to pressure building up in a steam engine. The brain later resembled a telephone switchboard and then an electrical circuit before evolving into a computer; lately it’s turning into a Web browser or the Internet. These metaphors linger in clichés: emotions put the brain “under pressure” and some behaviors are thought to be “hard-wired.” Speaking of which...

6. The brain is hard-wired.
This is one of the most enduring legacies of the old “brains are electrical circuits” metaphor. There’s some truth to it, as with many metaphors: the brain is organized in a standard way, with certain bits specialized to take on certain tasks, and those bits are connected along predictable neural pathways (sort of like wires) and communicate in part by releasing ions (pulses of electricity).

But one of the biggest discoveries in neuroscience in the past few decades is that the brain is remarkably plastic. In blind people, parts of the brain that normally process sight are instead devoted to hearing. Someone practicing a new skill, like learning to play the violin, “rewires” parts of the brain that are responsible for fine motor control. People with brain injuries can recruit other parts of the brain to compensate for the lost tissue.

7. A conk on the head can cause amnesia.
Next to babies switched at birth, this is a favorite trope of soap operas: Someone is in a tragic accident and wakes up in the hospital unable to recognize loved ones or remember his or her own name or history. (The only cure for this form of amnesia, of course, is another conk on the head.)

In the real world, there are two main forms of amnesia: anterograde (the inability to form new memories) and retrograde (the inability to recall past events). Science’s most famous amnesia patient, H.M., was unable to remember anything that happened after a 1953 surgery that removed most of his hippocampus. He remembered earlier events, however, and was able to learn new skills and vocabulary, showing that encoding “episodic” memories of new experiences relies on different brain regions than other types of learning and memory do. Retrograde amnesia can be caused by Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury (ask an NFL player), thiamine deficiency or other insults. But a brain injury doesn’t selectively impair autobiographical memory—much less bring it back.

8. We know what will make us happy.
In some cases we haven’t a clue. We routinely overestimate how happy something will make us, whether it’s a birthday, free pizza, a new car, a victory for our favorite sports team or political candidate, winning the lottery or raising children. Money does make people happier, but only to a point—poor people are less happy than the middle class, but the middle class are just as happy as the rich. We overestimate the pleasures of solitude and leisure and underestimate how much happiness we get from social relationships.

On the flip side, the things we dread don’t make us as unhappy as expected. Monday mornings aren’t as unpleasant as people predict. Seemingly unendurable tragedies—paralysis, the death of a loved one—cause grief and despair, but the unhappiness doesn’t last as long as people think it will. People are remarkably resilient.

9. We see the world as it is.
We are not passive recipients of external information that enters our brain through our sensory organs. Instead, we actively search for patterns (like a Dalmatian dog that suddenly appears in a field of black and white dots), turn ambiguous scenes into ones that fit our expectations (it’s a vase; it’s a face) and completely miss details we aren’t expecting. In one famous psychology experiment, about half of all viewers told to count the number of times a group of people pass a basketball do not notice that a guy in a gorilla suit is hulking around among the ball-throwers.

We have a limited ability to pay attention (which is why talking on a cellphone while driving can be as dangerous as drunk driving), and plenty of biases about what we expect or want to see. Our perception of the world isn’t just “bottom-up”—built of objective observations layered together in a logical way. It’s “top-down,” driven by expectations and interpretations.

10. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
Some of the sloppiest, shoddiest, most biased, least reproducible, worst designed and most overinterpreted research in the history of science purports to provide biological explanations for differences between men and women. Eminent neuroscientists once claimed that head size, spinal ganglia or brain stem structures were responsible for women’s inability to think creatively, vote logically or practice medicine. Today the theories are a bit more sophisticated: men supposedly have more specialized brain hemispheres, women more elaborate emotion circuits. Though there are some differences (minor and uncorrelated with any particular ability) between male and female brains, the main problem with looking for correlations with behavior is that sex differences in cognition are massively exaggerated.

Women are thought to outperform men on tests of empathy. They do—unless test subjects are told that men are particularly good at the test, in which case men perform as well as or better than women. The same pattern holds in reverse for tests of spatial reasoning. Whenever stereotypes are brought to mind, even by something as simple as asking test subjects to check a box next to their gender, sex differences are exaggerated. Women college students told that a test is something women usually do poorly on, do poorly. Women college students told that a test is something college students usually do well on, do well. Across countries—and across time—the more prevalent the belief is that men are better than women in math, the greater the difference in girls’ and boys’ math scores. And that’s not because girls in Iceland have more specialized brain hemispheres than do girls in Italy.

Certain sex differences are enormously important to us when we’re looking for a mate, but when it comes to most of what our brains do most of the time—perceive the world, direct attention, learn new skills, encode memories, communicate (no, women don’t speak more than men do), judge other people’s emotions (no, men aren’t inept at this)—men and women have almost entirely overlapping and fully Earth-bound abilities.


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Comments (61)

Wonderful.

Posted by Joe on December 29,2012 | 08:35 AM

The only problem is that the busting of myth number 5 is ITSELF a myth!

Number 5 is "Brains are like computers". You claim this is a myth because there are so many aspects of the human mind that do not seem to resemble ...... computers? Uh, actually, no. The thing they do not resemble is one level at which computers can be represented. One way to use computers, in other words.

But if I go and use the computer in a different way (write a different sort of program on it), all of a sudden the computer does start behaving in a manner consistent with the way the brain/mind works. Certain types of neural net programs, for example.

This meta-myth is one of the most persistent and frustrating of all. The idea that brains are NOT like computers is and always has been a silly idea, because there is no one thing that computers are "like".

10 out of 10 for effort, folks, but.....

Posted by Richard Loosemore on November 29,2011 | 10:13 AM

@ Charles Friedman - please read #5 again... lol

Posted by Evan Stratton on November 28,2011 | 01:27 PM

I'm still being taught the myths in number 10, and others, in intro to psych class today. It's maddening how long it takes for institutions to modify or update information.

Posted by Moody on November 27,2011 | 11:09 PM

another frequently repeated myth about the brain is the belief that the brain is "floating" in a sea of watery liquid within the cranium - yes there is a thin layer of fluid - but so thin that endocasts of the cranium are able to show the superficial structure of the brain

Posted by paul tenser on June 21,2011 | 01:47 PM

shadab (above) thinks that people today are well aware of the information presented - as a biology professor teaching human anatomy and physiology for 35 years i can assure him that the majority of individuals are most definitely not so aware

Posted by paul tenser on June 21,2011 | 01:40 PM

I have never been able to accept the fact that the brain could ever examine itself let alone understand itself. And, would the brain allow itself to examine itself? Wouldn't be like us trying to see ourselves without a mirror? Take the computer. It takes an external application to examine the operation of the computer. The computer cannot on its own examine itself.

Posted by Charles Friedman on June 17,2011 | 08:30 AM

All this information is interesting, and seems to dispel "myths," but where did this information come from, and how does anyone know it's accurate?

Not to step on any toes, but very few comments offering further information actually have good grammar and capitalisation, something of which I'd expect any educated person to be capable.

Posted by Mactrent on June 16,2011 | 01:05 PM

ITs been forty one yrs now, and i and only i know how much my is different now, i was hit by a car newyrs day 1970 and i still have problems with my memory if i take time off, i forget the basics of my trade and have to really work at it to make things work for me,i even forget to put my welding helmet before i strike an arc. and i still cant play my guitar because my brain wont tell my right side to keep a beat i know i bought a boat once yrs ago and i forget where i was when i bought it i know i was up isjand..i was up there last weekend and i could actually feel something around qualicum bowser aria but n maybe ill remember someday its a very stange sensation almost like i was reliving a dream wierd....hilt.

Posted by dan on June 12,2011 | 10:39 PM

Before exploring brain functions let us examine ' Intelligence ',the main responsibility it is entrusted with in it's domain. Intelligence can be defined as 'a System for auto-generation of Knowledge ' and knowledge can be defined as 'Dynamic memory mapping of inferences over concomitant environmental information'. This it does first in its autonomous domain for self preservation. The threat perception to self preservation is checked first and the rest are ordained stochastically as per their significance. This is almost similar to a computer checking for boot sector virus first and then open to external commands. It is significant that inference memory mapping is similar to building 'RDBMS' in SQL and execution methodology is similar to a good Google search engine as, if we type a word in its search window it gives a drop down of many options according to significant searches already made and goes to a particularity after specific input from the environment of usage. Further study is required in this regard.

Posted by Hayagreeva A on June 3,2011 | 09:29 AM

in point # 9 ..Is the author trying to convey that ..since we are not passive recipients but process the information that we receive from our senses (of the world around us) in myriad of ways, what one person sees may not only be not what is there actually but also not what the other person sees ??

Posted by Sriram on June 3,2011 | 09:16 AM

Anybody doing research into brain, I can give the following totally different line.

We think brain has all the receptors for each part of the body. Like if it itches you on the knee, it lights up the particular neuron in brain.

I am a vipassana meditator. This meditation involves watching your sensations. As you practise more, one gets very subtle sensations on the body. You are taught to watch sensations part by part. Now, this is what I observed in my meditation.
When you meditate you usually awaken a larger part of body than you intended with these subtle sensations. If you are watching sensations in your palms you also awaken your lap or your knees depending on the positioning of your hands at that particular time.

This to me contradicts the neuron theory. Because neurons for hand and/or lap and knees can not be at the same place in the brain. It is the very physical placement of these body parts which matters.

Can you think this over?

Posted by Ravi Kishore on June 3,2011 | 08:10 AM

I feel this subject needs lots more of research to come to any conclusions. If any normal person uses most part of his brain, how come the legendary physicist Stephen Hawking, despite his disease, is still the same genius? Why is that some people are extra-terrestrially geniuses while others exactly the other way round having the same brains?
On the other hand counter arguments can be passed that; as per the theory of use and misuse of parts, if human being used only "10%" of his brain for generations, he must have been left with only that "10%" of the brain in the process of evolution, after all, brain has no stand by energy saving mode. It consumes lots of energy. Also, on the lighter vein, if male and female brains are almost same, why is that even a genius like Einstein failed to understand women? So to come to any conclusion, a lot lot lot more of insight into the subject is a must.

Posted by Sriharsha on June 3,2011 | 04:43 AM

Great article ! and here's one for the soaps.....Conk 1 --> Amnesia; Conk 2 --> Status quo ante; Conk 3 --> ??

Posted by Sam on June 3,2011 | 03:25 AM

Hey... I dont knw if we have scholars among the commented one's but i am sure that the information drafted about brain is miniature and there is lot more important information that needs to be considered and interpreted..... I am not really good at this but I can say that brain functions in a very extraordinary way which is vague to describe... I hope you people understand... it will take more than a day for me to give a glimpse of its activities....:)

Posted by Sruthin on June 2,2011 | 02:09 PM

Wow!! I really loved what all is written by the writer. The writer has explained all the Myths beautifully and explicitly. I give 10 on 10...Its truly wonderful to know that there are such people who can explain things perfectly...Great!!

Posted by Roma on June 2,2011 | 11:06 AM

Well written,
But I don't think that these myths are common anymore.
People are well aware of these things now.

Posted by shadab on June 2,2011 | 08:23 AM

Body requires nutrition in appropriate proportion for function energetically, life a healthy lifestyle and remain disease-free which is called wellness state and it provides appropriate nutrition to brain too recent studies says (as per Dr. Small who is a neuropsychologist and nutrition expert for brain). To know more you can write to me at yadavkrahul@gmail.com

Posted by Rahul on June 1,2011 | 01:05 AM

Well thought article. I was involved in studying brain pathology for quite some time and also arranging brain awareness workshops for common people. Its true that brain functions are studied in terms of synaptic plasticity. The decline in synaptic plasticity leads to neurodegenerative diseases (read our article in Journal of Alzheimer's Disease 2010). I feel that brain functions are well coordinated involving many brain regions. We exactly do not know how many regions are coordinating to perform specific functions. Some regions are highly active in a particular task but it doesn't mean that other regions sleep during that time. We still do not know why certain brain regions respond after meditation but not in normal conditions. In my view the popular notion of use of brain is for realization of brain power in developing personal skills. Hindu God Krishna used his brain power at his maximum that every one knows. Einstein also realized this great power of brain that helped him great discovery of Theory of Relativity. Why meditation helps us in improving our scientific and other personality skills are some mystery remains to be discovered.

Posted by Dr Mordhwaj Parihar on June 1,2011 | 10:55 PM

This article is informative and is a must for every one. Thank you. seshu.

Posted by on June 1,2011 | 09:34 PM

all points are worth mentioning

Posted by hemanth on June 1,2011 | 02:35 PM

All differences between, male n female stem from TDF.

MALE BRAIN IS NOT DIFFERENT FROM FEMALES ON ITS OWN, BUT BY OTHER FACTORS, BOTH INTRINSIC N EXTRINSIC.

AT THE END OF THE DAY- MAN IS A PRODUCT OF NATURE N NURTURE. :)

The TDF factor is encoded by the SRY gene located in the Y chromosome.It is a DNA-binding protein that enhances other transcription factors, or is a transcription factor itself. Its expression directly or indirectly causes the development of primary sex cords, which will later develop to seminiferous tubules. These cords form in the central part of the yet-undifferentiated gonad, turning it into a testis. The testis then starts secreting testosterone and the Mullerian Inhibiting Substance.

Brain
As testosterone affects the entire body (often by enlarging; men have bigger hearts, lungs, liver, etc.), the brain is also affected by this "sexual" differentiation;[10] the enzyme aromatase converts testosterone into estradiol that is responsible for masculinization of the brain in male mice. In humans, masculinization of the fetal brain appears, by observation of gender preference in patients with congenital diseases of androgen formation or androgen receptor function, to be associated with functional androgen receptors.[34]
There are some differences between a male and female brain (possibly the result of different testosterone levels), one of them being size: the male human brain is, on average, larger.[35] In a Danish study from 2003, men were found to have a total myelinated fiber length of 176,000 km at the age of 20, whereas in women the total length was 149,000 km.[36] However, women have more dendritic connections between brain cells.

Posted by logan on June 1,2011 | 02:26 PM

hey, hey,

we can talk about percentage......
if we know what is 100 %, where we can say out ot this is this 10%.....

if we cannot count on so & so percent of any thing when we don't know what are the parameters for 100%

its infinity.................

Posted by sanjay de Goa on June 1,2011 | 02:12 PM

I think you missed the healing of the brain the computer hasn't accomplished this little trick. The errors that occur in the brain become a learning tool. The computer needs to be rebooted completely to shove it's problems. The brains memory tends to find solutions through memories. The healing of cells is now being shown in brains of people who may have had problems in the past but now we see information can be brought back. We as humans can learn by our mistakes. Computers will always need a programmer. Love that reboot.lol

Posted by Brenda Bradshaw on June 1,2011 | 05:26 AM

I have always wondered how they come up with the figure that we only use 10% of our brain power...compared to what, a genius or a gifted person.....what/where is the bench mark? Is it neural activity or synaptic activity in particular regions of the brain....? like a percentage is lit up and the rest is inactive....? like dark matter(analogy)?

Perhaps measuring the brains ability like one does with say, horsepower is wrong altogether. My two barrel carburetor on my small block Chevy produces 275 hp. with a four barrel I get 325 hp..that is it's potential. But as long as the brain is constantly disclosing itself (adding horsepower)to itself per se evolving it is impossible to measure I thinks;-)

Posted by Patrick on June 1,2011 | 05:23 AM

I have a cerebellar disorder and I affects my gait and balance any advice?

George, thang for everything!

Posted by John on May 31,2011 | 06:47 PM

Article published on the internet about the brain=everyone is instantly a neurologist! Love it.

@ Matthew: The 10% of unused brain (or potential, whatever) can still be used as a metaphor. Just because it's a myth doesn't mean we can't improve dramatically. Anyhow, we still evolve. To cognitive development and expansion!

@Everyone: It's inevitable that anything on the internet that mentions the differences or lack of differences between males and females brings out some really sexist comments. Do not engage them. Even if you can logically call them on it, they will drain you. Ignore 'em.

Posted by Jenn on May 31,2011 | 12:39 PM

@Diana E. Bonnett

Perhaps you should ask my ex-wife. She tried to kill me, but unfortunately for me I was found being male at a domestic violence incident, so I was to blame. 12 years (and many more crimes) later, she has never had to answer a single question, while I have lost my family, home, career, mind and body; I am frankly unable to explain why 'life' is not on that list.

Does that shine any light on why there may appear to be more male criminals than female ones? It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy born of that lie from Duluth.

Posted by Murray Pearson on May 30,2011 | 10:03 PM

@ Mike: "
Myth #11: The Brain Can Suffer From A Chemical Imbalance.
This is a myth put forward by Psychiatrists despite the fact it isn't true. Neurologists are the guys that tinker with and fix the brain and have nothing to do with Psychiatry. Neurologists are continully having to tell people that it is impossible for the brain to have a chemical imbalance and cannot affect a person's behavior.

Myth #12: We Think With The Brain.
This is another myth put forward by Psychiatrists and even Psychologists. Neurologists say from long history and research that the brain ONLY governs the body, it can't influence the mind in anyway."

What exactly are you smoking, Mike? Can you please specify which neurologists state what you claim they state? Can you explain how head trauma affects one's personal identity? This is something long since proven. I personally know this from 12 years of research in personal identity theory and neuroscience. You seem to think that the "mind" is something talked about like a Cartesian immaterial substance, but it's not. Modern science defines the mind as nothing more than the collective function of the brain. So, mind is to brain as strength is to muscle, or as digestion is to stomach. Mind isn't a "thing" (i.e. an object), it's a description of a function.

Posted by foulbreed on May 30,2011 | 10:11 AM

@ Robert K: "Still, a person s entitled to their own opinions and assumptions, however farfetched..."

This is called the fallacy of the irrelevant right, Robert, because it's irrelevant whether or not someone is entitled to his/her opinion in factual discussions. What you did is shift the discussion from a one about actual conditions of truth-value to one about entitlement.

The claims made in this article are either true or false, regardless of what anyone thinks about them. Human psychology doesn't influence the truth-value of a proposition. If I said "I believe the Earth is flat," the Earth wouldn't flatten itself out to conform to my belief. I'd simply be mistaken about what I believed to be true. If question of whether or not I'm entitled to hold such a belief is completely divorced from the question that determines whether or not I'm right.

Posted by foulbreed on May 30,2011 | 10:03 AM

I think you have both misinterpreted the "old saying" and completely missed the point. The old saying doesn't go, "We only use 10% of our brains." It's actually, "We only use 10% of our potential brain power." The key difference means everything here. If you're article is that poorly researched and written, why should we believe any of your facts?

Posted by Matthew on May 26,2011 | 12:08 PM

May b we'll b able to find some way to gather all the cogitating tissues at the particular spot of the brain that's being used up for concentrating the task we are performing. May b these tissues respond to a magnet that can help to gather all those tissues and we may achieve "100% concentration".

Posted by Rohit Dhiman on May 26,2011 | 10:54 AM

10% use compared to what, who? To claim that we use 10% you need to have an individual that uses 100% right?

Posted by Corinna on May 25,2011 | 01:12 PM

go read some scholarly articles on gender differences in communication

I have, and consequently know that gender differences in communication are a myth.

Posted by weaver on May 25,2011 | 06:44 AM

Great article. A friend of mine emailed it to me today. He was confused about item 10, as we men are always wrong about everything.

Posted by Dan on May 24,2011 | 09:24 PM

The comments on this article are making a really strong case for point #9.

Posted by Monstro on May 24,2011 | 03:18 PM

I have serious reservations about the assumptions made in this treatise.
1.) It refuses to recognize eidetic memory. You can go back and see details you didn't notice before.
2.)It disregards successful multi-tasking. Some are just better at it than others.
3.) Brains are different by gender - it's called hormones...
4.) Empathy is confused with sympathy. The Corsican brothers would be an example of empathy. This is a common error these days.
Still, a person s entitled to their own opinions and assumptions, however farfetched...

Posted by Robert K on May 24,2011 | 11:51 AM

The human brain is like a computer, just not exactly like the kind of computers we have now. Inferring otherwise, is literally arguing about labels.

Posted by Baileysmooth on May 24,2011 | 08:57 AM

Hey can we grab some referances for all these facts? They sound possible but it's hard to change what you've believed as fact to find as false without referances. Thanks :D

Posted by Nick on May 24,2011 | 07:25 AM

@Diana - the article doesn't claim that there are no differences between men and women, merely that the vast majority of those differences do not come from the brain. The difference between male and female brains is pretty small. The difference between what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman, with all the historical, cultural and gender baggage that goes along with it, is huge. So men do commit more crimes than women, especially more violent crimes, but that's not due to the brain.

Posted by Liz S. on May 24,2011 | 05:10 AM

@Diana
/sigh

Posted by Michaelquerty on May 24,2011 | 04:18 AM

@Diana E. Bonnett: "If male and female brains have no differences, why do so many more males commit crimes?"

Answer: Because the human society tells you that more males commit crimes - and so you expect more males to do them.
That's circular logic, but it happens all around you. Ask yourself: Who will be scolded the most in kindergarden fights? The girls. They'll be told that it's "unbecoming" for a girl to participate in physical violence. But the boys? They'll be scolded a bit and will get to hear a succinct "don't do it again", but at the same time that is said their fathers/family/the scolding person will praise them unconsciously/consciously for being strong/doing what a boy does. And it is *expect* that they'll fight again.

Btw.: Women also commit crimes, most often "light" crimes, but most crimes by females aren't reported (e.g. violence at home *by* females).

Posted by Zenbu on May 24,2011 | 03:02 AM

Diana it's not true men commit more crimes than women, it's just women don't get caught as often

Posted by patrick Austin on May 23,2011 | 02:32 AM

Excellent article, I really enjoyed it. Only one quibble: #5 is only half true. The brain is literally a computer in the most general sense of the word. It engages in processes like calculation, estimation, etc., and it is a system for processing inputs and producing outputs dependent on its internal state.

What #5 should really say is "the brain does not have a Von Neumann architecture". We don't have a CPU, or a single completely separate memory module, or completely separate modules for producing different types of output. That is, our brains perform computational operations in a manner that is *way* different to that of the digital computers we use in our daily lives. But, to say the brain is not like a computer ignores what a computer is at a more abstract level.

Blake Richards
Dept. of Pharmacology
Oxford

Posted by Blake Richards on May 23,2011 | 01:54 AM

it was easy reading till the last point. come on guys, men and women are the same?!clearly the articles priority is to be politically correct at the expense of science.ask steven pinker...
dissapointed.

Posted by hemant m on May 23,2011 | 01:26 AM

Myth 11. Brains are all alike. Lazy writers talk about generalities like they were universal truths. For example, less lazy neuroscientists have recently discovered "superior autobiographical memory", in which rare individuals really do have the "flashbulb" memories derided in Myth 2. It's important to understand the general nature of the brain, which this set of myths helps us understand. It is also important to understand that some brains work quite a bit differently than the norm. I suspect almost every brain differs from the norm in some way, and those differences are what make us individuals.

Posted by John Light on May 23,2011 | 01:00 AM

@Diana E. Bonnett - What leads you to believe that males commit more crimes than females? Do you have hard statistical data, or is just based on a case study compiled by your own limited life experience?

@Ines Sainz - a genius is only "made" once dead, only then can the value of his work bare the test of time; until then he's just human... lol

Posted by Albert Eisenstein on May 23,2011 | 12:32 AM

Diana, I believe that is due to the different levels of hormones in Males vs. Females, esp. Estrogen and Testosterone. While the brains may be the same, the male brain has more testosterone to deal with, and vice versa.

Posted by Miles Barney on May 23,2011 | 11:19 PM

"If male and female brains have no differences, why do so many more males commit crimes?"

bingo. It's NOT a myth that male and female brains are different, and to say they are the same is just soft-left feel-good nonsense that runs against the science. There's not a single area of cognition where males and females are identical.

The author names "communicate" as an example where men and women are the same. I don't know what to say, except go read some scholarly articles on gender differences in communication.

Posted by DA Munroe on May 23,2011 | 10:43 PM

@Diana

Strictly male and female brains are *mostly* the same. But there are some differences also.

There are some differences from in utero sex hormone exposures. This is one of the theories behind homosexuality, for example - it's not really a choice as some religious folks would have you believe.

Other parts of the difference are maintained by on-going exposure to sex hormones: this is very clear from accounts of transexuals undergoing hormone treatments - their sexuality changes but also the nature of their cognition as well.

Female-to-male transexuals, for example, report more stereotypical male-like goal and goal-focus thinking with testosterone treatments. Similarly middle-aged men who go on testosterone (which normally declines with age and often hits a "tipping point" in middle age) find their thinking clears and becomes more like their teens and 20s.

But it's also a mixed bag because all the estrogen in your blood (as a woman) right now was recently testosterone in your blood - all estrogen in women (and men!) comes from testosterone converted to estrogen by an enzyme called aromatase. So you have a certain ratio of estrogen-to-testosterone with estrogen only tending to dominate. In men aromatase is mostly shut off (but not completely) so the testosterone dominates but estrogen is floating around in their blood as well.

So the hormonal ratios are on a continuum distribution with "male" or "female" simply being the peaks of sex hormone ratio bell curves. Some women may actually have more "male-like" ratios than some men and vice versa. This severely muddles the male-female cause-and-effect.

Posted by JG on May 23,2011 | 10:35 PM

@Diana E. Bonnet

it could be due to hormones, or societal issues. i read in" the scientific american" that when psychologists studied violent prisoners, the most violent females and males had higher levels of testosterone.

Posted by anon on May 23,2011 | 10:16 PM

@Diana hormones

Posted by Dan Billings on May 23,2011 | 09:31 PM

you seem to be confusing 'no difference between male and female brains' with 'no difference between male and female personalities'.

Posted by pome on May 23,2011 | 09:00 PM

Yeah, #10 is just plain wrong, not to mention irresponsible. It's also internally inconsistent; the author concedes that men and women have "enormously important" differences when it comes to mating, but that the brains of men and women are nonetheless somehow (mostly?) the same in function/ability. So, while men and women differ substantially in their respective reproductive world-views (which, one might argue, represents the human's SOLE PURPOSE IN LIFE and/or THAT FOR WHICH EVERY PART OF THE HUMAN BRAIN ULTIMATELY AIMS), we're meant to follow the author's bald assertions that such differences do not manifest in any appreciable or meaningful ways in aptitude testing between males and females?

When the author exhausts the absurdities of such claims, I think she should launch a new campaign, one that demands absolute equality between human beings and birds. She will say, "It's unfair that birds should be allowed to fly, but not we humans! There are no real differences between us and them; it's just an illusion; society is conspiring to keep us shackled to the Earth!" Then, I fear she may jump from atop a tall building, fatally stubborn in her belief that she could fly, but perhaps such tragedy will be the price we must collectively pay for some progress in human understanding. Only then might we stop trying to make nature conform to our ideals, because, let's face it, that really hasn't worked out very well for us so far. LOL.

Posted by Etan Hall on May 23,2011 | 08:26 PM

Culture, Diana.

Posted by Cola on May 23,2011 | 07:48 PM

@Diana

The differences between genders when it comes to crime are rooted in social and biological differences. It's a field of study that is quite rich. For a basic rundown, I suggest looking at the Gender and Crime page on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_and_crime

Posted by Jesse on May 23,2011 | 07:41 PM

"If male and female brains have no differences, why do so many more males commit crimes?"

Probably hormones, see "The Trouble with Testosterone" by Sapolsky...

Posted by Dave9 on May 23,2011 | 07:10 PM

Myth #11: The Brain Can Suffer From A Chemical Imbalance.
This is a myth put forward by Psychiatrists despite the fact it isn't true. Neurologists are the guys that tinker with and fix the brain and have nothing to do with Psychiatry. Neurologists are continully having to tell people that it is impossible for the brain to have a chemical imbalance and cannot affect a person's behavior.

Myth #12: We Think With The Brain.
This is another myth put forward by Psychiatrists and even Psychologists. Neurologists say from long history and research that the brain ONLY governs the body, it can't influence the mind in anyway.

Posted by Mike on May 23,2011 | 06:00 PM

I also like to compare the brain to a computer's operating system.
I compare how a person organizes their life to what type of operating system they are using. (For example: "He is operating with Windows 3.1!" is not a compliment.)
I do realize that this is not scientific and probaly is not a fair assessment in many cases.

Posted by Kathy on May 23,2011 | 03:28 PM

If male and female brains have no differences, why do so many more males commit crimes?

Posted by Diana E. Bonnett on May 22,2011 | 01:37 PM

I had heard that when we perform tasks of some complexity - learning to play an instrument, learning a new language, practice sports, that the brain actually develops deep groves in the brain. When we abandon these studies, the grooves begin to close.
I like comparing the brain to the computer. As an elderly lady, I forget things and always say that it is just like my slow computer.
Fastinating subject, the brain. What makes a genius? or moron?

Posted by Ines Sainz on May 21,2011 | 08:55 AM



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