General knowledge quiz: wake up your brain with The Week’s ultimate challenge

The UK government has advised everyone in the country to work from home where possible, avoid social contact and stay away from pubs, restaurants and theatres.

The government has warned of further lockdown measures. Transport for London is already closing some tube stations, and businesses are preparing for the government order to shut up shop. Holidays and weddings have been called off - and sporting events, from football and rugby to Formula 1 races, have been cancelled and postponed. Even this year’s Olympic organisers are under pressure to delay the Tokyo Games.

In short, life is on pause, and boredom is soon to reign for many - if it isn’t already.

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Sure, there are lots of productive ways you could fill your time, from reading War and Peace to mastering the art of yoga or learning a new language.

But rather than overwhelm your brain with new information at a time when it is already taking in so many things, why not take a quick stock check on what you already know?

Test your general knowledge with The Week’s quiz, and see how sharp your brain is without the whetstone of office life and human contact:

Did you know?

The brains of people with excellent general knowledge are wired differently to those less adept at acing a pub quiz.

A team of German neuroscientists found that those with more efficient nerve fibre networks in their brains scored higher on general questions from various knowledge fields.

“We assume that individual units of knowledge are dispersed throughout the entire brain in the form of pieces of information,” says study leader Dr Erhan Genc, from the Department of Biopsychology at the Ruhr-Universitat Bochum.

“Efficient networking of the brain is essential in order to put together the information stored in various areas of the brain and successfully recall knowledge content.”

Researchers examined the brains of 324 men and women with a form of MRI brain scanning called diffusion tensor imaging. They used the results to reconstruct the nerve pathways in the brains of the participants, giving an insight into the structural networks of the brain, reports Science Daily.

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They then assigned a value to the brain of each participant. Those with a higher value - indicating better nerve pathways - scored higher on a 300 question general knowledge quiz put together by Dr Genc.

You can perform some scientific research of your own by testing your general knowledge with The Week’s quiz above.