Revealed: The fascinating facts (and common myths) about our brains

FACT: Looking at a photograph is harder than playing chess

When computer scientists first began trying to write programmes to mimic human abilities, they found it relatively-easy to get computers to follow logic and do complex maths — such as those required in chess moves — but very hard to get them to figure out what they were seeing in a visual image.

Today's best computer programmes can beat a grand master, but any toddler can beat the top programmes when it comes to making sense of the visual world.

One reason for this is the difficulty in identifying individual objects.

You only see this ambiguity when you see something briefly enough to misidentify it — like when that rock in the middle of the dark road suddenly turns out to be a neighbour's cat.

MYTH: You only ever use about 10 per cent of your brain Although half the world's population thinks this, in reality you use your whole brain every day.

But for the myth to stick around for so long, it must have been saying something that we really want to hear.

In fact, its impressive persistence may depend on its optimistic message: "If we use only 10 per cent of our brains normally, think what we could do if we could use even a tiny bit of that other 90 per cent."

The truth is, studies of brain activity show that even simple tasks actually produce activity throughout the entire brain.

MYTH: Listening to Mozart makes babies brainier

There is no scientific evidence for this.

The myth began in 1993 when a scientific journal, Nature, reported thatlistening to the first ten minutes of a Mozart sonata temporarilyimproved the performance of college students doing a reasoning test.

The idea was picked up a few years later by an American state governor,who played Beethoven's Ode To Joy to the state parliament and requested$100,000 to send classical music CDs to all parents of newborns in thestate.

Of course, the politicians failed to notice that it made no sense toargue that music leads to lifelong intelligence gains in babies basedon an effect that lasted under 15 minutes in adults!

The Mozart effect took off from there — despite the fact that no onehas tested the idea on babies. Ever. But by this point the idea thatclassical music made babies smarter had been repeated countless timesin newspapers, books and magazines where stories about the Mozarteffect have progressively replaced college students with babies.

But while playing classical music isn't likely to improve your child'sbrain development, something else will — having them play music foryou.

Children who learn to play a musical instrument have better spatialreasoning skills — i.e. they think about the physical arrangement ofthe world in a far more mathematical way (possibly because music andspatial reasoning are processed by similar brain systems).

FACT: Stupid tunes are hard to forget There's nothing moreannoying than the line of a song playing over and over again in yourhead. Blame it on your brain's ability to recall sequences.

We need to remember sequences every day, from the movementsinvolved in signing your name or in making coffee, to the correct routeyou need to take off the motorway to get home.

The ability to recall these sequences makes everyday life possible.

As you think about a snippet of a song, your brain may automatically associate it with one of these sequences.

This, in turn, increases the likelihood that you will recall that snippet, which leads to more reinforcement.

It's this cycle which helps the storing of memories.

How can you break this pattern?

One way is to introduce other sequences that interfere with the reinforcement of the memory.

So find another infectious song, and hope the cure doesn't become more annoying than the original problem!