No silly - please don't chop off 90% of your brain. The real question isn't so much, can we do without the other 90% --BUT RATHER-- how can we fully utilize the other 90% to gain superhuman powers? I'm not quite sure where the accepted notion that we only use 5-10% came from. Cat scans and other imaging techniques show brain activity during certain activities. However, can we be really sure that the other 90-95% is not being used? A certain part is where most of the electrical activity occurs, but the body is a complete system. Doctors have removed parts of the brain from epilepsy and other patients to help relieve some symptoms, and research has been done on animals. However, the brain is very uncharted territory.

PUT DOWN THE KNIFE! It is clear by the question you asked that you have been chipping away at yours already. ;)

No. Different areas of your brain interact and control different areas of your body, perceptions, sensations, emotions, well pretty much everything. Removing 90% enmasse would significantly remove those pathways and even if the brain itself still 'functions' as such, your body will not function properly at all.

erm well there have been successful times when the brain has been cut in 2 and the person ahs had independent control of limbs, and able to use a chalk board and write 2 completely different sentences at the same time. but to remove parts of hte brain im sure you would not have any control.

I certainly wouldn't want to test that theory.

It is simply not true that we use only 10% of our brain. That belief is based on a remark by Albert Einstein (theoretical physicist, not brain scientist). He didn't mean it literally; he meant that most people are mental couch potatoes and don't bother to use all the thinking power they are equipped with. His basic point was that his ability was not natural genius, but training. He had trained his brain like an athlete trains their body.

But if we did use only 10% of our brain, than what? What will happen? Using just one more over than you would gain something that beyone use... I'm just saying, or asking myself the same qusetion as you are. But people like that can do and become just aboout anything...

Possibly, but it depends which part you take away and which tasks you are supposed to do afterwards. Probably you will not be able to perform that kind of surgery on yourself either. ;-) 1) "Humans use only 10% or less of their brain" is a common misconception: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_misconceptions_about_the_brain http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/pdf/tenper.pdf Source: http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/4352098 2) "One prominent researcher who promoted the theories of equipotentiality and "mass action" was Karl Spencer Lashley (1890-1958). Lashley believed that memory was not dependent on any specific portion of the cerebral cortex and that the loss of memory was proportional to the amount of cerebral cortex that was removed. His experiments showed that the ability of rats to solve simple tasks, such as mazes and visual discrimination tests, were unaffected by large cerebral cortical lesions. As long as a certain amount of cortex remained, the rats appeared normal on the tests he administered. For example, in 1939 Lashley reported that rats could perform visual discriminations with only 2% of the visual thalamocortical pathway intact. He even estimated that this behavior required only 700 neurons. In another experiment in 1935, Lashley found that removal of up to 58% of the cerebral cortex did not affect certain types of learning. It is possible that overinterpretation and exaggeration of these data led to the belief that only a small portion of the brain is used. For example, although Lashley's rats may have been able to perform the simple tasks, they were not tested on other more complicated paradigms. In other words, the brain tissue that was removed may have been used for tasks that Lashley did not test. Moreover, Lashley was interested primarily in the cerebral cortex, not in other areas of the brain. Therefore, these data should not be extrapolated to other parts of the brain." Source and further information: http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/brain-myth2 3) "Clinical evidence indicates that damage to even a small area of the brain, such as that caused by a stroke, may have devastating effects. Some neurological disorders (e.g., Parkinson's disease) also affect only specific areas of the brain. Disabilities may arise after damage to far less 90% of any particular brain area. Because removal of small essential brain areas may have severe functional consequences, neurosurgeons must map the brain carefully before removing brain tissue during operations for epilepsy or brain tumors." Source and further information: http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/brain-myth3