What percentage of their brain does a person use? Why is this?

99.9999% of it as far as I am aware. The 10% myth is well... a myth.

You might not use all your brain all at the same time. WHen was the last time you were eating, performing second order partial differential equations, walking, swimming, comprehending poetry, making love and playing baseball all at the same time? You might not used all the relevant bits at the same time but you will use all of your brain given an acceptable time scale (say a day).

I think.

Depends on the person! LOL

All of it. It is an urban legend that we only uses 10%.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/354374

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/16611

Unless it is damaged, you use your whole brain. Just not all at once.

Since we developed MRI scans that can monitor electrical activity in the brain, we have a much better idea of how they function and allow us to do everyday activities. Any one activity will involve firing neurons in at least one and sometimes several parts of your brain. *There is no section of the brain that is always sitting there doing nothing*, unless it has been damaged in an individual's case.

The "you only use 10% of your brain" saying is a myth - the true part is that you could be using only 10% at any one time, for a specialized activity that only requires one section of the brain.

Certain people can get by with large sections of their brain damaged or removed. Severe epileptics have had literally half of their brain removed to prevent life-threatening seizures, and they can still do most of the activities they could do before. The brain appears to "rewire" itself to compensate for the missing bits. Isn't that fascinating? But it certainly isn't the norm.

less than 20%

As of yet, no one knows why

children/teenagers use around 4% of their brain capacity at a time when doing tasks, adults use around 10%. Humans have not yet evolved enough to access the full capacity of our brain power. In the future accessing say twice or three times as much as we do now at a time may allow us to use telepathy or other things we are uncapable to do.

I would guess all of it..............but just not at the same time. Especially George Bush.

I am reading a very interesting book "How the Brain Thinks" by Stephen Pinker (voted one of the 100 most intelligent people alive)...And this is a difficult question to answer. If you are into it the book is excellent. I believe it was up for a number of awards--including the Pulitzer Prize..It basically does for the brain what Desmond Morris did for the body in "the Naked Ape"--takes a complex subject and makes it readable.LOL I guess I really didn't answer you question--did I?

I would think it varies from person to person.

And then that percentage is used either well or not so much...

you know, there are days and people that I come across that I figure their brain merely serves as a filler to keep their ears from bumping together, but I am not sure to what extent we use our brain. I am sure that in it's entirety it is used, but at what capacity or how much is used daily I wouldn't know.

If you knew me just 10 yrs ago you would have thought that I only had an ear bumper...lol

Some say we only use 10% but it takes that or more just to do the things that we don't control i.e. heart rate, breathing, blinking and such.

+
-Buddy

People here are saying that us humans are only using 10% of our brains is a "myth". Well that so called "myth" is true we humans only access 10% of our brain. Think about it we learn new things because we have space in our brain that we are not using and that knowledge is staking up. We also sometimes forget that we know somethings. Take the simple act of pouring coffee in the morning: In walking toward the coffeepot, reaching for it, pouring the brew into the mug, even leaving extra room for cream, the occipital and parietal lobes, motor sensory and sensory motor cortices, basal ganglia, cerebellum and frontal lobes all activate. A lightning storm of neuronal activity occurs almost across the entire brain in the time span of a few seconds. So in my opnion we are only using 10% of our brain i just want to see if we can access the other 90% of our brain.
oh and by the way im an 8th grader lol i will appreciate it if you guys liked my way of thinking

People here are saying that us humans are only using 10% of our brains is a "myth". Well that so called "myth" is true we humans only access 10% of our brain. Think about it we learn new things because we have space in our brain that we are not using and that knowledge is staking up. We also sometimes forget that we know somethings. Take the simple act of pouring coffee in the morning: In walking toward the coffeepot, reaching for it, pouring the brew into the mug, even leaving extra room for cream, the occipital and parietal lobes, motor sensory and sensory motor cortices, basal ganglia, cerebellum and frontal lobes all activate. A lightning storm of neuronal activity occurs almost across the entire brain in the time span of a few seconds. So in my opnion we are only using 10% of our brain i just want to see if we can access the other 90% of our brain.
oh and by the way im an 8th grader lol i will appreciate it if you guys liked my way of thinking

100% of it is used to fully occupy the cranial cavity. How much of it sparks, I do not know :)

The answer is simplicity itself. Any given person uses only the amount they may need for that particular encounter. The more complex the encounter, obviously, the higher the percentage. The question that should be asked is, "what percentage of the human brain is acually needed to survive in modern society?" the answer is.............just enough to keep you out the psyc ward, which is about next to nothing.

People here are saying that us humans are only using 10% of our brains is a "myth". Well that so called "myth" is true we humans only access 10% of our brain. Think about it we learn new things because we have space in our brain that we are not using and that knowledge is staking up. We also sometimes forget that we know somethings. Take the simple act of pouring coffee in the morning: In walking toward the coffeepot, reaching for it, pouring the brew into the mug, even leaving extra room for cream, the occipital and parietal lobes, motor sensory and sensory motor cortices, basal ganglia, cerebellum and frontal lobes all activate. A lightning storm of neuronal activity occurs almost across the entire brain in the time span of a few seconds. So in my opnion we are only using 10% of our brain i just want to see if we can access the other 90% of our brain.
oh and by the way im an 8th grader lol i will appreciate it if you guys liked my way of thinking