Ways of studying the brain

• Ways of measuring the brain

  • animal studies
  • brain injury
  • post-mortems
  • case studies
  • longitudinal studies
  • correlational studies
  • experiments
• fMRI is a form of brain scanning
• fMRI uses magnetic fields to measure blood flow and oxygenation in the brain
• fMRI - when an area of the brain is highly active, that area needs more oxygen and greater blood flow to provide this oxygen, by measuring blood flow and oxygenation, fMRI scanners enable researchers to identify which areas of the brain are activated during certain tasks
• fMRI

  • gives us a picture of the brain
  • objective
  • takes a long time
  • magnetic field and radio waves to monitor blood flow
  • measures changes in energy
  • activities can be compared in a baseline task and during a specific task
• Strength of fMRI

  • captures dynamic image of brain activity opposed to post-mortems which purely show physiology
• Weakness of fMRI

  • interpretation of fMRI is complex and affected by temporal resolution
  • expensive leading to reduced sample sizes reduces validity
• EEG

  • measures electricity in the brain
  • picks up action potential
  • Dement + Kleitman, dreaming 4 patterns in a cycle
• Strength EEG

  • smaller, more portable, cheaper
  • temporal resolution, electricity is very fast
• Weakness EEG

  • spatial resolution, don't know where the activity is happening
• ERP

  • event-related potentials
  • a line graph that relates to a specific event/activity
  • produce an auditory/visual stimulus
  • converts the info into a graph
  • amplifier gets rid of the background activity
• EEGs detect general activity where the electrode is

  ERPs are more specific which relate to a specific stimulus
• Strength EEGs and ERPs

  • cheaper than big scanning machines so can be more widely used in research
• Weakness EEGs and ERPs

  • poor spatial resolution i.e cannot pinpoint exactly where activity is happening
• Strength post-mortem

  • enable researchers to study deeper areas of the brain that cannot be reached
• Weaknesses post-mortem

  • not a working brain
  • after death to try and correlate structural abnormalities to behaviour
  • may lack validity, small sample