So what is brain power? LO16712

Walter Derzko (wderzko@pathcom.com)
Tue, 27 Jan 1998 09:46:05 -0800

Replying to: Critical Learning Skills LO16696

Dianne Ball <z8179506@student.unsw.edu.au> and Doc Holloway shared with us
the results of a survey:

> A survey of 1414 managers and workers, released by Kepner-Tregoe, Inc,
> provided the following data- Nearly two-thirds of 773 hourly workers said
> their organizations were operating with half or less than half the
> employee brainpower available to them.

What does that exactly mean. How did the employees know that they were
operating on only half the brain power available to them? How was the
question asked ? What does brain power mean ? In most cases I think they
mean: In real time had I only known what questions to ask myself or what
to say. Thinking about thinking or cognition I think is more easily
understood, taught and applied then trying to understand the horsepower or
brainpower in our minds.

I'm amused that intelligent and normally critical people don't question
claims like this. When ads often say: We only use 5% of our brains-How do
we know ? What did we measure or track?

Since brains vary in size from 19 to 23 billion cells (study out of
Copenhagen Municipal Hospital, 1997), people who had larger brains and
only used 3% of their brain would be smarter then people with smaller
brains who used 5%-That's of course not the case. according to the study
above, men tend to outnumber women by about 4 billion brain cells but we
know that there is no correlation to intelligence either. Scientists know
for sure that intelligence is not due to a single factor such as number of
brain cells, speed of connections, or even degree of increased blood flow
from region to region. It's likely a combination of factors, that we don't
quite understand yet. We know from positron emission tomography (PET) and
functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which produce static snap
shots of the brain and from transcranial Dopler ultrasound, that monitors
brain activity as blood flow in real time that different thought patterns
and behaviors correspond to different activity areas in the brain. What is
challenging most neuroscientists is the fact that even that is not
constant from person to person or within one person over time if they have
experienced a brain injury or other trauma.

So saying that we only use x% of our brains is too simplistic a cut and at
best serves as a tag line to catch the 5% of your attention to buy some
brain-enhancing product or service.

Walter Derzko
Creativity Consortium
I-Lab
wderzko@pathcom.com

-- 

"Walter Derzko" <wderzko@pathcom.com>

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