Do you dream of where you'd like to go tomorrow? It looks like rats do. When the animals are shown a food treat at the end of a path they cannot access and then take a nap, the neurons representing that route in their brains fire as they sleep – as if they are dreaming about running down the corridor to grab the grub. "It's like looking at a holiday brochure for Greece the day before you go – that night you might dream about the pictures," says Hugo Spiers of University College London.

Research on naps, meditation, nature walks and the habits of exceptional artists and athletes reveals how mental breaks increase productivity, replenish attention, solidify memories and encourage creativity.

A new pair of brain-imaging studies suggest that researchers may be able to predict how likely young adults are to develop problem drinking or risky sexual behavior in response to stress.

One day, a man saw time itself stop, and as David Robson discovers, unpicking what happened is revealing that we can all experience temporal trickery too. (2014)