German Education Forum, 03 Documents of the time

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Documents of the Time

“University, Universality and Consciousness”

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Against the background of exceptional achievements of individual “geniuses” in almost all fields of human life, and on the basis that no thought can take place without the brain, it is obvious that the human brain has a potential, which is not utilised by the majority of people, and that in our average daily thought process, we do not even come close to utilising the complete potential of our brain.

If everyone of us were to work with a brain, which was able to function fully, i.e. with the full potential of all geniuses, one might say that we would be working at full capacity.

However, taking this approach, a percentage for the average person is not ascertainable, either.

To a number of universities, a more appropriate question than

“How much of our brain capacity do we utilise?”

seems to be the question:

“How much of our brain capacity do we develop?”

And in this respect the reply so far has been:

If we were to measure this potential under the point of view of possible connections of nerve cells of the central nervous system among each other, we would have to say that we utilise much less than 1%.

According to present-day estimates, the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) has approx. 100 billion (10^11) nerve cells and roughly 100 trillion (10^14) synaptic control centres, through which the nerve cells (neurons) connect with each other. With 100 billion nerve cells and 100 trillion synapses the possibility of neuronal interlinking exceeds the assumed amount of atoms in the known universe!

During the course of its development, the brain already forms an incredibly abundant interlink of nerve cells in the womb and during the first years of its life. The ability to develop new interlinks, does in fact remain a whole life, but its peak is in the first years of life.
The brain apparently follows the following rule: if interconnections are not used, they die off: "Use it or lose it", is the motto.
This already seems to be the case in childhood, as the bulk of inter-connections do not continue to exist and gradually die again. Thus, the adult average person utilises less brain potential than the growing child.
But also from this, a percentage is not ascertainable at present.

The human brain shows that only approx. 0.02% of nerve cells of the central nervous system absorb sensory stimuli and emit motor stimuli. Approx. 99.98% of nerve cells of the central nervous system are so-called interneurons,
which are responsible for working processes in the brain. At the same time, the brain seems so organised that a distinctly higher number of nerve cells are part of intellectual activities rather than of purely motor or sensory activities.

However, it is not possible in this respect either to determine a
percentage, as to how many brain cells are interlinked with each other, i.e. utilised for intellectual processes by the average person, and how many for other tasks.

Research shows that during each learning process new interlinks between nerve cells are set up: by learning and stimulation a more complex connection of nerve cells with each other is created, and this then leads to a more extensive utilisation of the brain. Thus, e.g., the size of certain areas of the brain increases in experienced musicians.

But it is also shown that with increasing stimulation and demands the brain solves the same task differently, the organisation of nerve impulses changes: thus, e.g., the brain of a music expert will process the same music in a different way than the brain of a layperson.