WAYS OF STUDYING THE BRAIN

• FMRI 


  Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a brain scanning technique that measures blood flow in the brain when a person performs a task. An increase in blood flow is a response to the need for more oxygen in that area of the brain when it becomes active. 
• (+) FMRI 


  RISK FREE AND HIGH SPATIAL RESOLUTION
• (-) FMRI 


  EXPENSIVE AND POOR TEMPORAL RESOLUTION
• EEG 


  Electroencephalogram measures electrical activity through electrodes attached to the scalp. Small electrical charges are detected by the electrodes that are graphed over a period of time, indicating the level of activity in the brain
• (+) EEG 


  PRACTICAL AND USES HIGH TEMPORAL RESOLUTION
• (-) EEG 


  produces a generalised signal from thousands of neurons. source not pinpointed
• ERPS 


  Event related potentials work by measuring small voltage changes in the brain triggered by specific events of stimuli. Establishing a specific response to a target stimulus requires multiple presentations of that stimulus and then averaging the responses together. This filters out brain activity that is not related to the appearance of the stimulus.
• (+) ERPS 


  SPECIFIC AND GOOD TEMPORAL RESOLUTION. BETTER THAN FMRI
• POST MORTEM 


  Refers to investigating the brain in post mortem examination where researchers will study a person who displayed a particular behaviour while they were alive that suggested possible brain damage. An example of this technique is the work of Paul Broca, who examined the brain of a man who had speech problems. It was subsequently discovered that he had a lesion in the area of the brain important for speech production that later was named as the Broca's area.
• (+) POST MORTEM

  Used in localisation and medical research.

  broca and wernicke relied on post mortem.
• (-) POST MORTEM 


  CAUSATION AND ETHICS

  it raise ethical issues of consent after death

  HM - hippocampus removed = could not make stm to ltm. suggests that hippocampus plays a vital role to encode stm to ltm.