Nowadays, neuroscientists have more sophisticated methods of watching the brain in action. One method is Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanning, in which the patient is injected with a mild radioactive material which is dissolved in glucose. The radioactive source decays via beta decay, emitting positrons (positrons are antimatter, and the principle behind PET scanning was considered in detail in my fifth book about particle physics). When the emitted positrons reach any normal tissue in the brain, they are annihilated (via matter/antimatter annihilation). This annihilation produces
...more
