Event-related potentials (ERPs)

• Outline

  • Uses EEGs to isolate neural responses associated with specific sensory, cognitive and motor events
  • Participant is presented with a stimulus (e.g. picture, sound) and the electrical responses to that stimulus (neural activity) are recorded using a statistical averaging technique which filters out extraneous brain activity, leaving only the responses that relate to the presentation of the particular stimulus
• Strengths

  • Brings more specificity to the measurement of neural processes
  • Excellent temporal resolution
  • Lower cost than other techniques (fMRIs)
• Limitations

  • Difficult to compare findings due to lack of standardisation in methodology between different studies
  • To be successful, all extraneous interference (e.g. background noise) needs to be eliminated - this is hard to achieve