Post-mortem examinations

• Outline

  • Analysis/dissection of the brain following death
  • Usually conducted where someone has a disorder or unusual mental processes or behaviour
  • Involves comparison with neurotypical brain
• Strengths

  • Vital in providing the foundation for our early understanding of processes in the brain e.g. Broca's and Wernicke's work
  • Has contributed to improved medical knowledge and helped to generate hypotheses for future study
  • Enables researchers to perform a more detailed examination of the anatomical structure of the brain, in particular deeper regions like the hypothalamus and hippocampus
• Limitations

  • Unable to establish causation as the differences observed in the brain may be unrelated to the behaviour
  • Ethical issues of consent - e.g. HM lost the ability to form new memories so could not provide informed consent