揭穿：我们只用了大脑的1/10？

Modern life, with all its digital gadgets and multitasking, is more than a little taxing on the brain. It would be extremely convenient if each of us had a secret reserve of brain power lying in wait, summonable with the right supplements or enough meditation or sleep. We've all heard the rumor that humans use only 10 percent of their brains, but according to science, this is hardly the case. Though the myth won't die, neuroscience proves that you use most of your brain most of the time.

现代生活充斥着各种电子物件、多任务进程，这些都归功于我们大脑的思考与创造。如果我们每个人的大脑仍有部分秘密资源未被开发，在正确的供给或合适的媒介或充足的睡眠下，可以唤醒这部分资源，那将使我们的世界更为便捷。我们都曾听说过这样一个谣传：人类只开发了大脑的十分之一。但科学研究告诉我们，并非如此。尽管谣传不止，但神经科学证明了，在绝大部分的时间里，你运用了绝大部分的大脑。

Although this "10 percent of your brain" myth has been debunked before, new research via Gizmodo shows that multiple regions of our brains are involved in completing even fairly simple tasks. Researchers from the University of Tübingen in Germany, MIT, and Princeton collaborated on a study titled "Cortical Information Flow During Flexible Sensorimotor Decisions." The results, recently published in premier academic journal Science, indicate that during a motion and color processing task, activity flowed through participants' brains all around 108 electrodes — not limiting itself to discrete regions, or just 10 percent. Though the pattern of motion changed depending on the activity, it was always widespread.

尽管这个科学界的都市传说早已被揭穿了，但一项最新研究显示，即便是完成非常简单的任务，也需要运用到大脑的多个区域。来自德国的Tübingen大学、麻省理工学院、普林斯顿大学的研究人员们一起合作，完成了一项名为“灵活的感觉运动决策中的皮质信息流”的研究。这项研究最近发表在了第一学术刊物《Science》上，研究结果表明：在一项运动和颜色处理的任务中，神经活动遍及参与者的整个大脑(108个电极都检测到了)——而非限制在某些不连续的区域、或者仅动用了10%的区域。尽管运动模式有所不同，但总是遍及大脑的。

None of this is to say that certain areas of the brain aren't more implicated in some types of processing than others (there are color-processing parts of the brain, motion-processing parts of the brain, and so on). And we've known since at least Freud (and now also from the behavioral economists) that our brains do some things totally subconsciously too, sometimes including even fairly complicated decision-making.

当然，这个研究并不是想告诉我们，大脑在处理特定类型任务的时候，没有一些特定区域更为活跃(大脑的确存在颜色处理区域、运动处理区域等等)。我们从弗洛伊德的学说里得知，我们的大脑会无意识地做一些事情，甚至有时候包括一些相当复杂的决策。

Still, the world is a complex place, confronting us with mixed stimuli all the time, and it really doesn't make any sense that our brains would have evolved little modules working in complete isolation from one another. If you want your brain to work better, it's not effective to go searching for its non-existent dormant chunks. Instead, eat some brain food, get some sleep, and let your complicated noggin do its already interconnected thing.

然而，世界是复杂的，我们总是接受着混合类型的刺激。如果我们的大脑只进化到运用自身的十分之一，而另外十分之九孤立无用，那也太不合理了。如果你希望你的脑子更好使些，而试图寻找那根本不存在的休眠区域，这将是徒劳无功的。更好的方法是：吃好，睡好，多用脑。