We only use 10 per cent of our brains

This is one of the most famous brain myths but we do use all 100 per cent of our brain’s potential. Using anything less would be catastrophically inefficient for any animal.

Some people are ‘left-brained’, others are ‘right-brained’

This myth is similar to the one before. We use all of our brain. People use these terms to indicate that someone is rigorous, methodical, logical (left-brained) or creative, artistic, imaginative (right-brained). While it is true that some people are more artistically inclined than others, it does not mean that they predominantly use the right side of their brain.

Our vision works very much like a video camera

This is an easy one to debunk. There are many ways to ‘trick’ your visual system. An amazing example is provided by the experiment carried out by Simons and Chabris in 1999, in which they showed a video of a group of people playing basketball.

A few minutes into the video, a person wearing a gorilla suit walks onto the screen for 10 seconds, looks at the camera, thumps its chest and moves out. Participants were told to watch the video and focus on the basketball players. Half the viewers did not notice the gorilla!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtKt8YF7dgQ