We know surprisingly little about one of the most important organs in our body — the brain.
Nevertheless, the world is filled with dozens of ideas about why we think the way we do.
Here are 11 of the most common brain myths — and the surprising science to counter them:
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Myth #1: You only use a fraction of your brain.
If this were true, we’d be able to remove a large portion of our noggins with nearly no consequences! Some scientists think the root of this myth may lie in the fact that you’re not constantly using 100% of your brain at once.
“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,” Barry Gordon, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, told Scientific American.
Myth #2: It’s all downhill once you hit your 20s.
Sure, some skills, like our ability to think quickly and recall information (also known as fluid intelligence), follow the familiar pattern: peaking at roughly age 18 and getting worse over the rest of our lives.
But recent research suggests that — in addition to getting wiser with age — we may also actually get smarter, at least in some ways.
Our ability to do basic math and use a larger vocabulary, for example, likely continue to improve until we turn 50. And our prowess at reading others’ emotions and recalling recent events doesn’t start declining until after age 30.