Analysis Of Addison Anderson Speech Debunking A Myth: We Only Use 10% Of Our Brains

The brain is the control center of the body, it governs and commands everything in order to perform specific and multiple functions to produce thoughts, feelings, and emotions. It is the most perplex organ inside the human body, making it the most intricate and complicated organ to study and understand. Due to this, roughly 67% of the public population and 50% of science teachers believe the misconception that humans only use 10% of the brain. This is debunked and explained by Addison Anderson of TED-ed in order to inform the general public about the infamous misconception about brain usage and energy consumption. Addison Anderson is a trained TED-ed speech narrator that aims to educate the watchers about the myth regarding brain usage because of the lack of clear understanding about the aforementioned myth. The speaker does this through delivering an informative speech about Richard E Cytowic, an American neurologist, and his lesson in neuroscience about the human brain usage.

The speech was executed nicely and delivered smoothly with a soothing voice, organized explanation and mesmerizing visuals that are pleasing to the eyes of the viewer. This completely captivates the attention of the audience, making the myth on how humans only use 10% of our brains completely easy to understand. This is to be expected because of the speaker’s professional experience in giving a speech about educating an audience. The speech was given through a video presentation without an actual live audience. The audience themselves are the watchers that are either curious or misinformed in regards to the myth. The target audience is mainly external because the speech is only seen on Youtube through video presentation and animation. The information given was short but specific and concise, keeping the audience’s attention throughout the entire 5-minute video presentation. The animations and visuals easily hooked the audience’s attention due to its appealing look and relevance to the topic. The speaker opens the speech with statistics stating the fraction and percentage of people believing the myth. Visuals also play a main role in the opening by presenting an easy way to imagine the speaker’s thoughts about the myth. Combining these information makes the speech clear by laying down its intentions and objectives in informing the general public about neuroscience in order to avoid being fooled by false information. Having knowledge about this information is important in order to avoid being a victim of frauds like Hucksters that take advantage of false information by promising to unlock the “hidden potential” of the other 90% of the human brain as stated in the speech.

Although the opening wasn’t powerful and memorable enough, it is sufficient in hooking the audience and achieve its goal in stating its primary objective. The speech was focused on its primary objective in elaborating the myth, proving that the brain uses more than 10% of its capacity every day. In order to prove this, evidence was stated through a set of information and statistics used by the speaker using Richard E. Cytowic’s findings in neuroscience as a basis. Addison Anderson presented the ratio of energy usage and glucose consumption of the human brain, stating that it uses 60% of glucose as an infant, 50% as a child and 20% as an adult, concluding that the brain consumes less glucose as the body ages. It is also shown that the ratio between neuron density and body size are inversely proportional, stating that the human brain is densely compact due to its relative size and weight, making humans smart by constantly using energy and using each and every part of the brain accordingly to the needed function. The information used in the speech was organized and easy to follow.

The transitions between subtopics and ideas were smooth and clean, ending in one subtopic and starting a new one related to the previous subtopic. The focus and primary objective weren’t forgotten, creating a clean presentation and a nice flow of information. Each information given was connected to the previous statement, making a straight line towards the conclusion of the entire speech. The conclusion was entertaining and informative, stating remarks that would make its mark in the audience. The speech ended by summarizing the main points of the introduction and the body of the speech in a concise manner by specifying the main ideas. It basically identifies the strong points of the human brain and its weaknesses, having memorable additional information such as the inefficiency of multi-tasking, because the brain is already executing too many functions outside of the human conscience. The speech also states that the brain needs sufficient rest and energy in order to remain powerful and focused. Failing to acknowledge this information may result in failing to do any of the tasks at hand. The speech also gave a memorable remark about wasting mental energy, stating that the brain goes through a lot of functions to produce a single thought, that’s why it’s important to remember on using the human brain efficiently for good reasons. Addison Anderson is an experienced speaker capable of delivering a speech through voice-overs, teaching millions through TED-ed.

The audience can tell that the speaker is enthusiastic in delivering the speech because of his tone of voice and his interest in sharing the truth about the myth. The speech had no live audience, there was no interaction between the speaker and the audience during the given speech. But it is centralized to notify the general public and spread awareness of the myth to the audience, making the speech focused on improving everyone’s knowledge. Visual aids provide a clean, proper and appealing design to the viewer. The animations used in the speech was precise to the point that makes it simple and easy to understand the information given to the audience. It was also designed accordingly in order to fit with the speaker’s given information about the subject. The voice of the speaker was also well coordinated and in sync with the animation for the audience to imagine and visualize the concept of the speaker’s message. Since the speaker used a studio to record his voice, the record was, in fact, nice and clean without any background noise. Since the animations are done well, it brought life and interest to the speech, grabbing the attention of the audience while helping them understand the topic. Since Addison Anderson has done many voice-overs in TED-ed, his voice has been trained well enough to be soothing with adequate volume in order to properly deliver the necessary details in his informative speech. His voice ranged from loud and soft to highlight parts of the speech that gives the main point and words that signify importance, he does this in an audible range to avoid a monotonous tone.

The pace was also adequate, not too fast and not too slow, this is because the speech gives information to the viewer, which is why it’s crucial to have a pace that’s slow enough to be understood. There were also pauses within the speech in order to signify transitions between subtopics and highlighting information. Therefore, it’s important to know more about the human brain in order to understand its needs and to avoid believing seemingly realistic myths. Ignorance may lead to being fooled, but the speech debunking the myth had given sufficient information to prove that humans use more than 10% of brain power while stating other facts that will help the audience take care of the brain efficiently. The speech given by Addison Anderson was a great informative speech that’s specific and concise enough to be understood between the 5-minute time span, giving information to those that seek the truth. He was articulate in giving the speech for the audience’s convenience. Although there were terms such as ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate), everything scientific that was said in the speech was already discussed on science lessons during Highschool, making the information precise and easily understood. The brain truly is an amazingly complex organ, as of right now, the human brain fires of 200 neurons on average, this helps a human read, analyze, memorize and understand a given text. That’s why it is important to take care of the human brain because it is the control center that defines “you.