AO3 -Ways of studying the brain

• An issue with post-mortem studies is identifying the cause and effect.
• There are many extraneous factors that can affect the results of a post-mortem examination, making reliable conclusions more difficult.
• Medication a person may have been taking, their age, and the length of time between death and post-mortem examination, are all confounding factors that make the conclusions of such research questionable.
• Post-mortem examinations provide a detailed examination of the anatomical structure as well as neurological aspects of the brain, that is not possible with other scanning techniques.
• There can be ethical issues in relation to informed consent and whether or not a patient provides consent before their death.
• fMRI brain scans are non-invasive, which make them more ethical to use with patients.
• fMRI scans simply measure changes in blood flow and therefore it is impossible to infer causation.
• An advantage of EEG and ERP scans is that both techniques are non-invasive.
• EEG/ERPs have good temporal resolution as they can take readings every millisecond.
• fMRI scans are reliable and objective ways of studying the brain.
• EEGs are useful in clinical diagnosis, for example in detecting epilepsy.
• ERPs are able to pinpoint localisation of function.