Do We Only Use 10% Of Our Brain? - Conscious And Subconscious (Sleep Paralysis & Lucid Dreaming)

[Integza]

Do we only use 10% of our brain ?

This myth establishes that most of the human brain is unused, suggesting that we only use a small portion of it and because of this some kind of secret power can be unleashed, turning us into superheroes able to use telekinesis, telepathy and so on.

One possible origin is the reserve energy theories by Harvard psychologists William James and Boris Sidis 
in the 1890s who tested the theory in the accelerated raising of child prodigy William Sidis.

This urban legend became reason of controversy since the release of the movie "Lucy", a lot of scientists established that the myth is in fact ridiculous because brain scans prove that all the areas of the brain are used but as everything in life it's not that simple.

The human brain is very complex, even nowadays scientists can not understand how memories are stored . All the areas of the brain are used, no doubt about that but do we control all those areas?

Many things in our body are controlled by our brain but not exactly by us, for example are we consciously controlling the blinking of your eyes? You probably weren't until just now, but now because i mentioned it it's hard not to notice it again.

In fact there's a lot we don't control in our body, there's also a part of our brain that we can't access .The subconscious is kind of a mystery, a place in our mind where are stored repressed memories, fears, deep desires and sometimes alter egos.

Maybe all the brain is used, but can we say it's entirely controlled by our conscious mind ?

 

If you like to learn cool stuff, visit my channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2av...

Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/thisisintegza

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Integza__

Edited October 15, 2015 by Integza

[ssslokesh005]

yes, this is true , we are not using our brain at least 20%....... give always work to brain, then only it will be active 

[pgrmdave]

Maybe all the brain is used, but can we say it's entirely controlled by our conscious mind ?

I think you're confusing the order of operations here. The brain is what controls the mind, not the other way around. The mind exists only as a pattern of brain activity.

[Integza]

I think you're confusing the order of operations here. The brain is what controls the mind, not the other way around. The mind exists only as a pattern of brain activity.

Not exactly, what i mean by mind is ourselves and the YOU  is what controls the conscious part of your brain.

 

For example, for you to raise your arm first you need to want to raise your arm then the brain sends the signals needed to move the muscles . (CONSCIOUS)

 

For you to make your digestion you don't need to want it , it will happen independently of what you want, you don't control it.(Subconscious/Unconscious)

Edited October 23, 2015 by Integza

[pgrmdave]

Not exactly, what i mean by mind is ourselves and the YOU  is what controls the conscious part of your brain.

the "you" that controls the conscious part of the brain is the brain. There is no separation, there is no discussion of the mind that makes sense without the acknowledgement that it is wholly a creation of the brain.

 

For example, for you to raise your arm first you need to want to raise your arm then the brain sends the signals needed to move the muscles . (CONSCIOUS)

 

For you to make your digestion you don't need to want it , it will happen independently of what, you want you don't control it.(Subconscious/Unconscious)

Yes, most of the brain is dedicated to parts of the body rather than to the mind. The brain controls the mind, it directs the mind, and it is the mind. Talking about them like they're separate things would be like talking about whether an interface controlled the program or the program controlled the interface. They're one and the same. The program builds the interface to receive data, receives data, reacts to incoming data, and updates the interface accordingly.

[Integza]

I can't say i agree with you , saying the brain controls the mind is like saying your brain controls you, and even if is not easy to define what is the "you", is easy to say that's you who controls your body movement with your conscious mind. You can't say mind is the same as brain , it's only a part of it.

 

"It is a common belief that the mind is the activity of the brain. He proposes that this is only one part of it.  On the Triangle of Well-Being, each point of the triangle is an essential component to mental health.  One point is the physical brain and nervous system which are the mechanisms by which energy and information flow throughout our beings."

by Dr. Daniel Siegel

[pgrmdave]

Point me to where the mind exists in such a way that it isn't the byproduct of brain activity. Give me evidence, show me the logic that allows for the mind to exist in any meaningful sense without being brain activity. All the evidence we have so far regarding what we experience to be "ourselves" or "our mind" points to it being something that springs from the brain. The brain is the thing that thinks, causing the emergent behavior of the mind. To say that the mind wags the brain is to forget that minds don't have actual existence outside of the particular pathways, neural firings, and chemical reactions of the brain.

[Integza]

Using your own analogy of software and hardware, and remembering  you that what is in question here  is not if the mind existence depends of the brain but if the mind controls the brain and other organs.

If you have a chip/processor in an automated system like a robot, what controls the robot is not the chip/processor(brain) but the information in it, the pattern of electrical activity registred in chip . The processor by itself is useless, is the information programed in it that counts and remember that in the case of the human mind we are not programed, we learn and evolve, we are conscious about the world around us.

 

Can the mind exist without the brain? No . But by your logic software doesn't exist because it can't exist without hardware. Software is the information in form of electrical pulses that controls the system.

[CraigD]

But by your logic software doesn't exist because it can't exist without hardware. Software is the information in form of electrical pulses that controls the system.

Whether software can exist without hardware is a fun question. :thumbs_up Like practically any question expressed in informal, natural language, it’s a semantic one, dependent on the meaning of the terms “software” and “hardware”.

 

Since I’ve been a computer programmer for about 40 years, the last 30 as a 40 hours/week profession, but was in school long enough to be inculcated with some of the central ideal of computing theory, my personal definitions is that “hardware” is a real physical machine Turing equivalent to a universal Turing machine with a finite tape. Note that I include the tape as hardware.

 

“Software”, by my personal definition, is the entirety of tape, which is to say, the part of the UTM that can change. It’s tempting, and I started this post stating that “software” is the part of that tape that containing the symbols on the tape that encode the specific Turing machine the UTM is simulating, but by this definition, much of what I intuitively think of as software isn’t, because much of the software I work with is interpreted rather than compiled. In the UTM model, this “interpreted code” is part of the input section of the tape, not the coding of the emulated Tmachine. In more common terms, this address of this code is never contained in a CPUs program counter, only in its other address registers.

 

My definition of software is purposefully inclusive and too large, because it includes symbols that I don’t effect the state of the UTM – in common terms, it includes both data and software. I don’t find this very bothersome.

 

Since any Von Neumann architecture computer is a UTM (or, to be correct, an extension of a TMachine where the tape can be not just be moved by one cell, but to any cell – let’s call this an XTM), and most actual computers are single or collections of Von Neumann architecture computers, this means that I consider software to be physical, actual electric electrons in the memory of the computer, or electrons or atoms in the storage it can access. I include storage because, intuitively, I don’t really mean a Von Neuman architecture machine in the usual sense, in that I think of its randomly accessible non-volatile storage to be part of its memory, not something accessed via an input/output device. This avoids complications arising from situations where the software is never fully copied from storage into true memory, which is the case in most present day computers.

 

By these definitions, “software that exists without hardware” can’t exist. Both are simply identical to the tape of an actual, physically realized XTM.

 

These definitions stated, I can consider what might be a definition of “software” that could exist without hardware. When I do,

Ada Lovelace

come to mind.

 

For the reader not computer geek enough to immediately understand, ;) let me explain. Ada Lovelace, by some accounts the patron goddess of computer programmers, was a British child prodigy mathematician and writer who, in 1833, at age 17, met mathematician and engineer Charles Babbage, saw a prototype of his non-Turing complete Difference Engine mechanical computer, then in 1842-43, translated and expanded on an Italian mathematician’s description of Turing’s proposed Turing-complete Analytical engine. Part of her paper – its famous section G – included a description of a program for computing Bernoulli Numbers.

 

The Analytical engine was never built. So, by my definition, neither Ada’s paper’s section G not the ideas in it are software. Because of this paper, however, many people consider Ada “the first computer programmer”. If we define “software” as “what computer programmers write”, then, section G is software.

 

This dive into the distinction between computer hardware and software wanders far, and I think, perilously, off the topic of the human brain, mind, and the distinction between them. I don’t think the human brain is a Turing equivalent computer, so we shouldn’t draw too close an analogy between human brain and a TEquiv computer, or the human mind and software.

[CaelesMessorem]

I can't say i agree with you , saying the brain controls the mind is like saying your brain controls you, and even if is not easy to define what is the "you", is easy to say that's you who controls your body movement with your conscious mind. You can't say mind is the same as brain , it's only a part of it.

 

"It is a common belief that the mind is the activity of the brain. He proposes that this is only one part of it.  On the Triangle of Well-Being, each point of the triangle is an essential component to mental health.  One point is the physical brain and nervous system which are the mechanisms by which energy and information flow throughout our beings."

by Dr. Daniel Siegel

 

   Allow me to save you some time on debating the dichotomy of "mind" and "brain" as I've already had a similar discussion with pgrmdave on this thread. If you're looking to talk about the utilization of the brain, it's likely best to leave the "mind" out of the conversation, as it isn't technically a physical thing.