It is Woody Allen's second-favourite organ, a mass of tissue and nerve that gets into gear the moment you wake up and operates relentlessly and feverishly (until you reach the office). It accounts for 2 per cent of your bodyweight, yet soaks up 20 per cent of your energy input.

In short, our brains need nurturing. Treat them well and they will boost your mental prowess, a point stressed in the current New Scientist, which is offering readers a unique opportunity to improve their brain power through a few simple lifestyle tricks.

As the magazine points out, factors - such as diet and behaviour - can 'help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells'.

Start with breakfast. Studies show that skipping this meal reduces performance at school and work - though not any breakfast will do. Sugar snacks are unadvisable, for example. Kids who start the day on these have the attention spans of a 70-year-old.

Instead, you should plump for beans on toast. Toast on its own boosts cognition, says New Scientist, but beans are even better. They are rich in fibre and high-fibre diets are linked to improved cognition. And if you can't face beans in the morning, or if fellow commuters object, spread Marmite on your toast.

Then there is the simple issue of 'using it or losing it'. Failure to keep your brain stimulated will cause cognitive decay. As the US writer Erma Bombeck once claimed: 'Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.'

Try learning a musical instrument, which could have a major impact on your thinking. 'Six-year-old children who were given music lessons, as opposed to drama lessons or no extra instruction, got a 2-to-3 point boost in IQ scores compared with the others,' says the magazine. Simply listening to stories, such as radio's A Book at Bedtime, also provides a boost to performance, as do puzzles, such as crosswords.

At the same time, you also need to know when to turn off and relax. Lack of sleep is a key factor in poor intellectual performance. According to Sean Drummond, of the University of California, San Diego, anyone who has been awake for 21 hours has the abilities equivalent 'to someone who is legally drunk'. Sleep not only refreshes the brain, it processes new memories and hones new skills. Just taking a nap after lunch can have a real effect.

At the same time, such sedentary habits should be balanced with proper exercise. Walking for half an hour three times a week can improve learning, concentration, and abstract reasoning - particularly among the elderly and schoolchildren. Among the latter, those who exercise several times a week gain higher than average grades at age 10, particularly boys. The reason, suggests Angela Balding of Exeter University, may be that aerobic exercise boosts mental powers by sending extra oxygen to the brain.

Not all the advice is straightforward, however. Learning a violin or piano, and driving one's musical ability may boost IQ, but listening to unfamiliar music while working interferes with concentration. You should only have familiar background music while working.

Similarly, some drugs can now improve memory, though scientists warn that these could have undesired side-effects. Sometimes we forget things for a good reason, they point out.

Boosting the brain's performance is not that straightforward, in other words. But then, as science writer Lyall Watson points out: 'If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.'