Brain&neuro key studies

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Penfield's study of the interpretive cortex

A: to investigate patients' responses when their brain was electrically stimulated

M: Montreal procedure (epilepsy patients conscious on operating table) - specific neurons electrically stimulated - record patient's response 

R: visual cortex stim - see colours/shadows/outlines of images. somatosensory area stim - tingling/touch sensation/false movement. temporal lobe stim - deja vu (sense of having the experience before) or describing past events as if they were being relived (e.g boy heard his mother tell him his coat was on backwards)

C: temporal lobe stores memories of past events in terms of the experience & meaning of it to the person. interpretive cortex stores feelings.

E: + reliable - there is recordings of ppts voices confirming the results. + met ethical guidelines so we know ppts were safe in experiment. - results cannot be generalised to people that do not have epilepsy as all ppts had the condition

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Tulving's "gold" memory study

A: to investigate whether episodic memories produced different blood flow to semantic memories

M: 6 participants (2 were him and his wife) injected with radioactive gold - repeated measures design - each ppt did 4 episodic tasks (recall personal experiences) & 4 semantic tasks (recall facts) - blood flow in brain monitored on PET scan

R: diff blood flow patterns found in 3/6 ppts - semantic memories produce more blood flow in posterior cortex - episodic memories produce more blood flow in frontal lobe

C: memory has a biological basis & episodic/semantic memories are localised in diff parts of brain

E: + study produced scientific evidence (results are difficult to disprove) so evidence is unbiased. - restricted sample (only used 6 ppts and blood flow differences only seen in 3) so results are inconclusive.

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