EEG

• EEGs measure electrical activity within the brain via electrodes that are fixed to an individuals scalp using a skull cap
• the scan recording represents the brainwave patterns that are generated from the action of millions of neurons, providing an overall account of brain activity
• EEG is often used by clinicians as a diagnostic tool as unusual arrhythmic patterns of activity may indicate neurological abnormalities such as epilepsy, tumours or disorders of sleep
• strengths

  valuable at helping diagnose conditions such as epilepsy because the difference in brain activity can be easily detected on the screen
• strengths

  it has contributed to our understanding of the stages of sleep
• strengths

  it has extremely high temporal resolution - it can accurately detect in a single millisecond
• weaknesses

  only general information is received from an EEG
• weaknesses

  not useful in pinpointing the exact source of neural activity and does not allow researchers to tell the difference between activity in locations that are very close to one another