Exer­cise mul­ti­ple areas of your brain by try­ing to answer this riddle:

A blind beg­gar had a brother who died. What rela­tion was
the blind beg­gar to the brother who died?
“Brother” is not the answer.

Now, your brain’s turn. What is the answer?

tick tick tick tick…

still work­ing on it? …

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Expla­na­tion (answer at bot­tom):
This puz­zle is very sim­ply stated and yet stumps those who have not heard it before, because the lis­tener tends to make an implicit assump­tion about gen­der — in this case that a blind beg­gar is a man.

Brain Use:
This puz­zle touches on ana­lyt­i­cal func­tions like abstract rea­son­ing, hypoth­e­sis test­ing, and implicit assump­tions resid­ing in your frontal lobes, as well as your cre­ativ­ity in find­ing novel solu­tions to prob­lems and emo­tional mem­ory.

The brain region most strongly impli­cated in emo­tional mem­ory is the amyg­dala. The amyg­dala is crit­i­cally involved in cal­cu­lat­ing the emo­tional sig­nif­i­cance of events, and, through its con­nec­tion to brain regions deal­ing with sen­sory expe­ri­ences, also appears to be respon­si­ble for the influ­ence of emo­tion on per­cep­tion — alert­ing us to notice emo­tion­ally sig­nif­i­cant events even when we’re not pay­ing atten­tion. The amyg­dala appears to be par­tic­u­larly keyed to neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences. But it is not only the amyg­dala that is involved in this com­plex inter­ac­tion. The cere­bel­lum, most strongly asso­ci­ated with motor coor­di­na­tion skills, may also be involved in remem­ber­ing strong emo­tions, in par­tic­u­lar, in the con­sol­i­da­tion of long-term mem­o­ries of fear. Parts of the pre­frontal cor­tex also appear to be involved. One study found that a region of the pre­frontal cor­tex was jointly influ­enced by a com­bi­na­tion of mood state and cog­ni­tive task, but not by either one alone. Another study found that the dor­so­lat­eral pre­frontal cor­tex is more active when the par­tic­i­pants were sur­prised by unex­pected responses.

Links:
Exec­u­tive func­tion
Exec­u­tive Func­tion Dis­or­der
Basic Neu­roanatomy

Answer:
The blind beg­gar was the sis­ter of her brother, who died.