EVALs Postmortem

• A strength of PMA is that it allows for a detailed examination of anatomical and neurochemical features compared to non-invasive methods such as fMRI. This is because you can physically assess the brain parts - unlike techniques like fMRI which can only visualise them as a diagram. This gives us precise information about brain regions/neurochemicals involved in particular behaviour. Inceases the validity
• A strength of PMA is supporting evidence which was crucial in building the first understanding of key brain processes. Paul Broca used PMA to establish a link between language and the brain by showing that an area of the frontal lobe is related to language production. This helped add scientific credibility to study the relationship between the brain and behaviour/cognition and thus allowed for hypothesis testing using empirical evidence
• A weakness of PMA is that the data is retrospective. If interesting findings are discovered in the structure of the brain during PMA - researchers cannot follow-up to gather further data on behaviour. Also it is possible that damage to brain areas could be due to unrelated trauma or decay after death and therefore inaccurate conclusions about which parts of the brain are linked to the abnormal behaviour
• Another weakness of PMA is that there are usually small sample sizes and samples consist of unique patients. This means that the results cannot be generalised to the wider population thus reducing the representativeness and therefore the generalisability.
• EVALs for PMA

  • S - allows for a detailed examination of anatomical and neurochemical features compared to non-invasive methods such as fMRI.
  • S - supporting evidence which was crucial in building the first understanding of key brain processes
  • W - data is retrospective
  • W - generally small sample sizes