Before I begin the talking part: please complete a drawing I prepared for you draw the first animal

l that comes to your mind, including the curve you can see. Do not hesitate it should take about 30 seconds. Now show me your pictures.... ... I am afraid to say that none of you is going to become second Salvador Dali or Pablo Picasso. Your abstractive thinking is limited, or stifled, by your perception. This simple test is to show you, that humans brain always chooses the shortest and easiest way to achieve something. It is also cold effectiveness. I was surprised to see my (male) friend drawing a frog the curve served as its eyebrows. This means that some brains think in a different way for them this shortest way is more interesting. Their associations are ... say ... extraordinary. I will not explain it to you, but I will try to share some astonishing facts about the brain. Facts that will help you understand the functioning of this important organ. It is the least explored (and, in some cases, simply not yet discovered) but its activity proves to be crucial to our lives and its death means our death. The brain makes up about 2% of our weight and it eats up about 25% of our energy it would light up a 40 watt bulb. A fourth of this energy is consumed on the process of seeing. If you do not believe me, carry out a simple experiment on the swimming pool: check how much time you can spend under water with your eyes closed and open. The difference should be about 40-50 seconds in favour of diving with your eyes closed. We all know the basic construction of our brain, more or less. Two strongly creased halves, each comprising five lobes, white and grey matter. Although every day thousands of operations are performed on this exceptional organ, the level of medical knowledge about it is embarassingly low. We try to find out what makes a genius, analysing Einstein's or Disney's brain. The results of such researches are surprising: though density of grey cells in Einstein's brain was overaverage, it had little to do with his mind's abilities. Conclusion? It's not how the brain is built, but, mostly, what we make of it, that makes us genius or only ordinary people. Here comes a very touchy moment of my presentation, where a common question should fall and be answered. Does brain have a gender? And, to your surprise, I have to admit that it does. Women acquire emotions with both halves, whereas men tend to tackle them with one half only as a side effect of reality. We own intuition, we perceive more colours and generally more details of life, whereas guys are better at finding correlations, 3-dimensional imagination and drawing conclusions (OFTEN FAR-FETCHED, though). Both halves cooperate better in female brains, but male ones are more focused. Therefore, guys cannot do many things at the same time, and women simply have to. There are no research proving that woman's brain is less capable than man's. It is more complicated, though. There are various types of geniuses. I would like to give you several examples of exceptional minds. Elias from Lithuania memorised 2000 books (after first reading). He was unable to forget anything he once read. Leon Gambetta (from France) knew by heart all the books he has ever read in his life. Harry Nelson (from the USA) was able to memorise thousands of chess games, so that he could play twenty games simultaneously (winning all). There are also great human calculators like Charles Cansler or Jedidah Buxton, the latter being illiterate. Some say that our brain registers everything we perceive and stores it in subconscience and it takes genius to retrieve the data. Others argue that abstractive and creative thinking has little (if anything) to do with perception. Both parties agree that there is not such thing as genius construction of brain we may only say that it works in a genius way. Our brain is not only responsible for our ideas but also for our fears. You may think that you know many strange fobias, but let me give you a few astonishing examples. Brontofobia when you're afraid of thunders

Gefynofobia when you're afraid of crossing bridges Basifobia when you're afraid of walking Stasifobia when you're afraid of standing Stasibasifobia when you are scared of both standing and walking probably you love to lie down. Nomofobia fear of losing your cell phone or telecommunication. Spectrofobia when you're afraid of mirrors or your reflections in them. Some celebrities seem to suffer from it... Triskaidekafobia fear of number 13. Are you laughing now? And why on earth do I mention fobias? Well, you stand a better chance of being a genius if you have one. The more weird, the better. Wanna proof? Picasso was scared of barbers and cutting hair. Matejko was afraid of darkness. Pascal suffered from agorafobia. Hans Christian Andersen was terrified by fire who isn't, though? Michael Jackson feared germs and Eddie Murphie can't stand dirt. Apparently if you're a mentalist, probably you're also capable of proving Newton wrong or something equally bright. Brain is also responsible for our illnesses. After all, pain is just a signal from our brain. That means that cancer is as much a psychical illness as, for example, anorexia. Or bulimia. Or alcoholism. Or drug addiction. Or love. When we think that Amor's arrow has hit our heart, it's just our brain that floods us with dopamine, serotonine and, most of all, fenyloetyloamine also known as amfetamine. Falling in love means being constantly and naturally doped for 3 to 10 weeks. Thank heavens it does not last longer or else every infatuation would end up with a heart attack and more or less serious physical damage. Our brain stops killing us with drugs when the first thunders of socalled 'feeling' fade away. Then we can rely on entirely social and artificial bonds that keep us in a relationship. If your character doesn't let you fall for such cheap tricks of your brain be grateful and enjoy your single life. (just like I do :) ). In the end, I cannot fail to mention ESP extrasensory perception. It's a huge drawer where scientists put everything they cannot understand or explain. Here goes precognition and retragnition, telepathy, psychometry (seeing through touch), remote seeing, auroscopy and so on. Is it just extended intuition or something more? An ordinary human uses only 2-3% of his brain we can observe it on EEG. Most areas of our five lobes are on eternal holiday. Can we boost this most spectacular organ? Of course we can and I do not mean drugs. If you don't want to lose it, use it. Try to train your memory, perceptiveness, intelligence, taste of art. Probably you won't get Noble prize, but maybe you'll join Mensa or invent new way of communication. Maybe you'll simply be able to pick up a handsome guy at a bar, saying: 'Hey, baby. D'ya know my IQ is higher than the number of bones in your body?'. Probably he won't understand 'cause his brain wouldn't light a match, but who cares? You may let your brain flood you with love drugs and stop thinking about the usage of your grey cells. The most stunning geniuses were usually sadly single. What I want to leave you with is Einstein's riddle. Albert claimed that only 1% of mankind is intelligent enough to solve it. Good luck :-)