(UNIFESP - 2009)DO PEOPLE ONLY USE 10 PERCENT OF T

(UNIFESP - 2009)

DO PEOPLE ONLY USE 10 PERCENT OF THEIR BRAINS?

By Robynne Boyd

The human brain is complex. Along with performing millions of mundane acts, it composes concertos, issues manifestos and comes up with elegant solutions to equations. It's the wellspring of all human feelings, behaviors, experiences as well as the repository of memory and self-awareness. So it's no surprise that the brain remains a mystery unto itself.

Adding to that mystery is the contention that humans "only" employ 10 percent of their brain. If only regular folk could tap that other 90 percent, they too could become savants who remember  to the twenty thousandth decimal place or perhaps even have telekinetic powers.

Though an alluring idea, the "10 percent myth" is so wrong it is almost laughable, says neurologist Barry Gordon at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. Although there's no definitive culprit to pin the blame on for starting this legend, the notion has been linked to the American psychologist and author

William James, who argued in The Energies of Men that "We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources." It's also been associated with Albert Einstein, who supposedly used it to explain his cosmic towering intellect.

The myth's durability, Gordon says, stems from people's conceptions about their own brains: they see their own shortcomings as evidence of the existence of untapped gray matter. This is a false assumption. What is correct, however, is that at certain moments in anyone's life, such as when we are simply at rest and thinking, we may be using only 10 percent of our brains.

"It turns out though, that we use virtually every part of the brain, and that most of the brain is active almost all the time," Gordon adds. "Let's put it this way: the brain represents three percent of the body's weight and uses 20 percent of the body's energy."

Although it's true that at any given moment all of the brain's regions are not concurrently firing, brain researchers using imaging technology have shown that, like the body's muscles, most are continually active over a 24-hour period.

(www.sciam.com/article. February 7, 2008. Adaptado.)  

 

No trecho do terceiro parágrafo - "It's also been associated with Albert Einstein, who supposedly used it to explain his cosmic towering intellect." -, a letra S em IT'S indica a forma verbal: