Topic: Do Right-Handed People live longer and other silly questions

[Cookie Parker]

Silly questions and honest answers!

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[Cookie Parker]

Is it true people use only 10 percent of their brains?

Among the most popular science myths, this one has been around for more than a century. Nobody knows how it got started, but it’s certainly been a useful motivational tool for generations of nagging parents (“Billy, just think what you could make of yourself if you tried using the other 90 percent!”), advertisers who hint that if we use their products we must be pretty smart cookies, and psychics who claim their powers come from the untapped portion.

Along the way, dozens of prominent scientists—including Albert Einstein, William James and Margaret Mead—have helped preserve the adage.  While these folks were highly qualified in their fields, none was a neuroscientist.

“If it were the case that we used only 10 percent of our brain,” says Professor Reza Shadmehr, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, “then damage to a small part should have little impact on our abilities. We know from studies of stroke patients that when a small portion of the brain is damaged, there are often devastating consequences.”

“Even while you sleep, the brain is quite active, particularly during rapid eye movement [REM] sleep when dreaming occurs,” says Dr. Sterling Johnson, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “In this stage of sleep, the brain’s electrical activity is the same as in your normal wakeful state.”

Besides clinical observations, brain scans (both PET and MRI) also provide evidence that many places in the brain are active during a variety of tasks, according to Dr. Eric Chudler, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

“It appears that there is no hidden storehouse of untapped brain power,” Chudler notes. “We use all of our brain.”

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[Graybeard]

I don't know about living any longer, however, everyone is born right handed, but the smarter ones overcome it.

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[Cookie Parker]

I don't know about living any longer, however, everyone is born right handed, but the smarter ones overcome it.

You may be right there...they are supposed to be some of the more creative..and I take it you fall under that?

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[Graybeard]

You may be right there...they are supposed to be some of the more creative..and I take it you fall under that?

You got that right. 

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[Fancy_Flo]

Think of it this way:  There are more right handed people in the world, therefore more right handed people live longer than the fewer left handed people.




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[Graybeard]

Think of it this way:  There are more right handed people in the world, therefore more right handed people live longer than the fewer left handed people.

It's not how long you live, it's how you live.

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