1. Your brain uses less power than your refrigerator light

In a day, your brain uses the amount of energy contained in two large bananas — around 12 Watts of power. Although the brain is efficient, it’s an energy hog. At only 3pc of the body’s weight, it consumes 17pc of the body’s total energy, most in maintenance. The drain for thinking hard is barely noticeable.

2. Frequent jet lag can damage memory

Jet lag in repeated doses can be dangerous to your brain’s health. People who often cross many time zones can experience brain damage and memory problems. This probably results from the stress hormones released during jet lag that are known to damage the temporal lobe and memory. However, you probably don’t need to worry unless you work for an airline.

3. Why you can’t hear phone conversations in a noisy room

Talking on your mobile phone in a noisy place can be difficult. The phone makes the brain’s task harder by feeding sounds from the room you’re in through its circuitry and mixing them with the sound it gets from the other phone. This makes it a harder problem for your brain to solve because your friend’s transmitted voice and the room noise are tinny and mixed together in one source. Cover the mouthpiece and you’ll stop the mixing.

We will publish more fascinating brain facts next time.

Extracted from Welcome To Your Brain: The Science of Jet Lag, Love and other Curiosities of Life, (Rider Books, £12.99).

Lucid Living is a very small volume. It describes itself as “a book you can read in an hour that will turn your world inside out”.

However, it also contains a wealth of insights into the human condition and beyond that makes it a rare work in a relentlessly materialistic world.

Lucid Living sets out seven insights that Freke says will change your life and your view of the world. They certainly will if “you have ears to hear and eyes to see”. Most will turn away in fear or disbelief.

And yet, this little book does have the capability to change your view of yourself, especially if you have any spiritual ability at all. Freke’s basic message, expressed at its simplest, is :

Life is not what it seems. You are not what you think you are.

And so it isn’t, and neither are you.

The phrase “turn your world inside out” is particularly germane because that is precisely what the beyond-mind experience described here does : matter becomes transparent as if it doesn’t exist, and space comes alive and full of intelligence.

Timothy Freke has written a number of other books with Peter Gandy on Gnostic Christianity, which are also a must-read if direct insight is your central concern.

There’s one type of article that appears over and over in newspapers and magazines. It concerns the differences in behaviour between men and women.

John Gray’s 1992 bestselling book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, was based on the premise that men and women live on different planets when it comes to relationships.

Gray has now published a sequel, Why Mars And Venus Collide, which attempts to show how to improve relationships by understanding how men and women cope with life and stress.

Here are six points from the book from a woman’s point of view on how to make your man a better partner.

1. Trust him
Show a positive belief in his abilities and intentions and he will become a more caring and attentive partner.

2. Acceptance
Don’t try to improve him, accept him as he is. When a man feels accepted it is much easier to listen and give you the understanding you need.

3. Appreciation
When a man feels his efforts are appreciated he is motivated to respect his partner more.

4. Admiration
When a man feels his unique characteristics, like sense of humor and strength, are admired, he will feel secure enough to devote himself to you.

5. Approval
An approving attitude recognizes the good behind what a man does. When he receives approval, it becomes easier for him to accept a woman’s feelings and point of view.

6. Encouragement
A woman’s encouragement gives hope and courage to a man by expressing confidence in his abilities and character. This motivates him to give her the loving reassurance she needs.

They all seem to be hovering around a similar point : flatter the chap rotten and he’ll do your bidding.

I wonder for how long that would last? He’s bound to smell a rat at some stage. Probably when he finds his lady’s copy of Gray’s book and discovers she’s been manipulating him all along.

Be yourself, but be generous toward those closest to you, is Mind Matter’s superior advice.

You’re asked a math question you must solve entirely in your head. The answer is 2,396,232,838,850,303. What chance have you got of getting it right?

Alexis Lemaire with one of his little problems

Correct answer : zero.

Not, however, if you are Alexis Lemaire. He has broken the record for finding the 13th root of a 200-digit number. Basically, that looks like this :

85,877,066,894,718,045,602,549,144,850,158,599,
202,771,247,748,960,878,023,151,390,314,284,284,
465,842,798,373,290,242,826,571,823,153,045,030,
300,932,591,615,405,929,429,773,640,895,967,991,
430,381,763,526,613,357,308,674,592,650,724,521,
841,103,664,923,661,204,223.

Last December, at Oxford’s Museum of the History of Science Alexis broke his own record, reducing it to 77.99 seconds. Even with a calculator you wouldn’t beat Lemaire doing the calculation in his head.

How does he do it? “It is quite difficult. I did a lot of preparation for this. More than four years of work and a lot of training every day. A lot of memorizing. I need three things — calculating, memorizing and the third on mathematical skills. It is a lot of work and maybe a natural gift.”

One of the theories being put forward by researchers is that damage to one area of the brain creates compensation in another. Brain scientist Dr Allan Snyder has suggested that everyone may possess such abilities but be unable to access them.

The genius himself explains that what he does is to transform raw numbers into other structures so he can “see” the answer to the problem. “When I think of numbers sometimes I see a movie, sometimes sentences. I can translate the numbers into words. This is very important for me. The art is to convert memory chunks into some kind of structure.

“I see images, phrases, actions. It’s very tactile, sensitive. I have these associations between places and numbers. Some places are imaginary, I try to vary so I don’t confuse the numbers. It’s important to memorize. I have to be precise.”

Lemaire’s explanation is similar to that of British genius Daniel Tammet, who set the world record for reciting pi to more than 22,000 digits at the same museum in 2004. To him, he said, each number has a distinct colour and appearance, some beautiful, some not, with each complex calculation making up a landscape.

Now you know.