Scientists tell us that we humans only use a small percentage of our brain’s multiple and complex abilities — some a smaller percentage than others.
Memory or recall of all the things that have taken place in our lives is one fascinating aspect. All the information we have absorbed in a lifetime — useless or otherwise — is there but accessing it when we want or need it is often the difficulty. Failure to recall names of people we have met or even known well at some point has to be the most embarrassing.
When asked recently about a book I was reading, written by Canadian author Alice Munro, I suddenly couldn’t remember the well-known author’s name. I had to retrieve the book while standing in front of the inquiring individual — under the guise of wanting to show the interesting cover — to hide my embarrassment in momentarily forgetting the name.
It is a frustrating and even a bit scary, not being able to recall a piece of information, especially when you have family members struggling with dementia or Alzheimer’s. Apparently one way of avoiding those two diseases and perhaps even improving the brain’s performance is to exercise it more often. The lazy portion that is just floating around in your skull doing nothing but taking up space needs a task.
I decided to test that theory out by giving my brain a task and then leaving it undisturbed, on its own, to see how well it could respond. This I did by asking it to name all the Canadian hockey players who took part in the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the USSR. It was the greatest sports event I will ever see in my life, which took place when I was 20 years old, so quite some time ago. It had made a huge impression on me then.
Since I was reading a book recently released by the hero of that momentous hockey series, Paul Henderson, about how hockey affects the way Canadians think, I thought the task an appropriate one.
Naming the first 10 or so players was actually quite easy. Names like Phil and Tony Esposito, Peter and  Frank Mahovlich, Bobby Clarke, Ron Ellis, Serge Savard, Guy Lapointe, Ken Dryden, Jean-Paul Parise, Yvan Courn-oyer, came back to me quite quickly. This I did while lying in bed at night before falling asleep, putting no deadline pressure on my brain to come up with the names.
But then there was a blank screen and I wondered how my brain would ever produce those names, although I knew without a doubt it had them.
Just before sleep came, my brain slowly began responding to its assigned task by popping up a few names on the previously blank screen: defenseman Pat Stapleton, winger Dennis Hull, another winger by the name of Goldsworthy with no first name attached. A defenseman called White, also with no first name attached. Wayne Cashman arrived complete.
Not bad, but I knew there were more players who had played a central role in the series than that.
Next day, as I did daily chores at the barn — which one can usually do without drawing on much brain power — unexpectedly, more names started popping up. First name Bill was attached to Goldsworthy and White. A last name Bergman with no first name but, an hour later — while I was filling the outdoor furnace with wood and not thinking about hockey at all — the name Gary attached itself to Bergman, one of the standout defenseman in the series. Rod Gilbert, Jean Ratelle and more arrived over the course of the day like the baseball players stepping from between the rows of corn in the movie Field of Dreams.
And so it went until all the main players were named and the task I had given my brain to work on independently was eventually complete. More importantly, a portion of my brain that I was not using, while carrying on with mundane daily tasks in front of me, had something to do.
This experience has made me acutely aware of the tremendous potential held within the percentage of my brain previously unused. I don’t know exactly how big that percentage is but I suspect it is quite large. In sharing this revelation, some people have already suggested as much to me.
This morning I assigned it the task of naming all the seven dwarfs from the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs fairy tale. So far today, it has produced all but two — with those surely to come at any moment.
Tomorrow, I might ask it to recall all the characters that hung out at the Boston bar on one of my favourite TV shows of all time that was on 25 years ago, Cheers.
In the meantime, I am going to finish reading my Alice Munro book … if I can remember where I put it down this morning.