Ten myths about the brain

Here are some common myths about the brain.

1) We only use ten percent of our brain
(a variant of this is Einstein said we only use 10% of our brain)

This is not true.
We use all of our brain. If you look at a brain map like those found here or here, or the interactive BBC brain map, you'll notice that there are arrows and labels going all over the place. There's not a part of the brain that isn't doing its job.
Besides, why would we have extra space? The brain, although only one percent of our body by weight, takes up to ten percent of our energy expenditure. With all that glucose getting burned just to keep it running, it's an expensive piece of equipment.

If you haven't considered this before, think about people who have skull fractures in car accidents. When they get to the hospital, you never hear of a doctor who says "well, they got brain damage, but thank God it wasn't the ten percent they were actually using!"

Many people find the idea that they have untapped resources inspirational. I don't want to tell you otherwise: you do have untapped resources. Perhaps we only fulfil ten percent of our potential. However the 'fact' that we only use 10% of our brain should be taken metaphorically, not literally.

2) The brain doesn't grow new cells.

This was once thought to be the case. In fact it was an accepted fact for many years that adults do not grow new brain cells. However, recent research has shown that this is not true. Even if it was, the fact is that the brain reconfigures itself, in part by the growth of axons, so that it can heal.
The brain has a remarkable ability to recover after even something as traumatic as a stroke.

3) Some people are left-brained, some people are right-brained

This is a very popular idea. Left-brained people are rational, methodical, details oriented. Right brained people are creative, big picture types. The idea of a left-right split came about from studies of split brain patients in the 1960's. Doctors treated people with epilepsy by severing their corpus collosum: the cord that connects the left hemisphere of the brain to the right.
The patients, now crippled from living a normal life, were studied by neuroscientists who found them a rich source of data on the funtioning of the brain. it seemed that information presented to the left side resulted in performing some tasks - " left brain tasks" - satisfactorily, while different tasks could be done by the right hand side.
Unfortunately, it's not as simple as the scientists thought. John McCrone, writing in New Scientist in 2000, said that there are differences, but it's more a matter of style:

Under the scanner, language turned out to be represented on both sides of the brain, in matching areas of the cortex. Areas on the left dealt with the core aspects of speech such as grammar and word production, while aspects such as intonation and emphasis lit up the right side. In the same way, the right brain proved to be good at working with a general sense of space, while equivalent areas in the left brain fired when someone thought about objects at particular locations.

Research continues into the subtle differences between the two halves of the brain. However, it is not true that there are people who use their "left" side predominantly or their right side.

Sure, some people are rational, details oriented types, while others are creative and intuitive. These differences between people have nothing to do with what side of the brain they use.
We use it all.

4) Schizophrenia means "split personality" (or multiple personality).

These are two completely different things.
Schizophrenia is a relatively common mental illness, affecting about 1% of the population. In some ways, it is the stereotypical mental illness: hearing voices, seeing things, delusional thoughts and beliefs. It can come in many varieties, but typically involves thought disorders such as paranoia and delusions of grandeur. Schizophrenics often produce a kind of word salad: things link from on topic to the next without having any coherent, overarching meaning. Schizophrenia, depending on the severity, can have profound and debilitating effects on an individual.
Fortunately, there are medications that control the symptoms.

Split personality, on the other hand, is a dissociative disorder that is thought to sometimes occur after extreme trauma. It is very rare, and some have questioned whether it exists at all.

5) Playing Mozart to babies boosts their intelligence.

This is known as the 'Mozart Effect.' It was originally proposed by two researchers, Rauscher and Shaw, who reported a small gain for pre-schoolers who had listened to Mozart.
However, it turns out that their finding was merely a fluke (what researchers call a Type 1 error). In other words, a couple of the kids scored high on the day of testing, and a couple of other kids scored unusually low, for reasons that had nothing to do with the fact that Mozart was played.
Research into the subject has since found that there is no Mozart effect.
This has not stopped the so-called effect from becoming a multi-million dollar industry.
For more information, read this article at skepdic.com. Kenneth Steele, a researcher at Appalachian State University, has done much to counter the spreading of the myth.

6) Autistic individuals have an inbuilt talent for prime numbers

This all began with a book by Oliver Sachs called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. (a great book, by the way). Each chapter in the book covers a different case of anomolous brain function. In one chapter, Sachs describes two autistic brothers that he encountered that would pass the time away by saying numbers to each other. It later became apparent that the numbers they were saying were prime numbers! Somehow these two boys had developed a private game, in which they made use of some algorithm for generating prime numbers that they had discovered themselves. Sachs describes an incident in which a box of matches was dropped and the matches spilt out. One boy looks at the matches and says "thirty seven." the other brother says "thirty seven." The first brother says "thirty seven" again. Sachs later counted the matches and found that there were 111 matches. The prime factors of 111 are 37 and 3. (ie 37 X 3 is 111).
The story has a sad ending: The brothers were separated to encourage them to integrate more with other children, and they lost their prime number talents.
So. That's an actual documented instance of two autistic children who are good with prime numbers. However, to the best of my knowledge, it is the only documented instance.
It's a fascinating case study. however, because of this one recorded instance, modern television and cinema is populated with autisic savants solving problems with their mysterious prime number abilities. Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man is the best known.

7) Depression isn't a real illness.

There seems to be a cottage industry of anti-science campaigns, targeting psychology and psychiatry in particular. The simple fact is that people can become depressed, that this depressed state results in a neglect of duties such as work, loss of friendships, and even death (through suicide).
If people didn't kill themselves, the anti-psychiatry brigade would not matter so much, but depression can be a matter of life and death. Furthermore, many depressed people, although they never get to this state, suffer greatly.
The technology exists to fix the problem through medications. It is sheer recklessness to try to convince people not to take this medication.

8) Anti-depressants turn you into a zombie.

Before prozac, the only medication that a doctor might prescribe for depression was valium. Valium, if taken in high doses, can lead to cloudy thinking and slowness of movement: a "zombie".
However, that all changed with the invention of serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRI). If you're not depressed, then taking prozac, or celexa, or another anti-depressant, will have no effect on you.
If you are depressed, you will probably feel no effect either, but after a few days, you may start to notice that your depression is not as severe as it was. There are side-effects that often occur with these medications, such as reduced sex drive. However, they do not cloud your thinking.

9) Anti-depressants/anti-psychotics and other psychiatric medications stop you from experiencing life to the fullest.

People have a notion that somehow anti-depressants stop "the highs and the lows". A related idea is that they can reduce creativity. Both of these are wrong: they go against the known science of these chemicals. They also show a misunderstanding of what depression really is.
Depression isn't about "feeling sad." It's a state of impaired brain functioning, where the person feels worthless, withdraws from society, is unable to function normally, and takes no joy from life. This is a disease that disrupts life, and results in lost productivity and sometimes death. There is no upside.
Feelings of sadness can inspire creative works, as all experiences can. However, the depressed individual is less able than most people to experience creative urge, or to put that creativity to good use. Rather, the depressed person is likely to dismiss the idea as of no value.
This myth of creative angst borne out of depression prevents people from seeking the help that they may need. It is important to remember that the most creative, productive people are not depressed; or if they do get depressed, these represent times of reduced, not increased, productivity.

10) Submliminal messages can influence you.

An additional part of the myth says: There was a study done in a cinema where the word "coke" flashed on the screen made people want to drink coke.

Subliminal advertising doesn't work. The famous experiment in a movie theatre never happened. A quick look at advertising on television will show the truth about effective advertising. It's not subliminal: when they want you to buy something, they make sure that the product is fully in your conscious awareness. A full account of the origins of the sublimal advertising myth can be found here.