Ways of Studying the brain 0.0 / 5 ? PsychologyBiopsychA2/A-levelAQA Created by: lauraking20Created on: 13-06-17 12:30 4 ways to study the brain 1) Post Mortem 2) fMRI 3) EEGs 4) ERPs 1 of 21 What are post mortem examinations? Ways of studying the brain of ppl who have shown particular psych abnormalities prior to death 2 of 21 Example? Showed that HM had lesions in his hippocampus 3 of 21 (+) Allow examination of deeper brain regions 4 of 21 (-) Risk of confounding variables - e.g age of death, drug treatments, circumstances of death 5 of 21 What is a fMRI? A technique that measures brain activity while a person carries out a task 6 of 21 What does it measure? Changes in blood oxygenation - indicates increased neural activity 7 of 21 (+) Non invasive (safer, no harmful radiation) 8 of 21 (-) Blood flow is not a direct measure of neural activity (overlooks networks) 9 of 21 What do EEGs record? Electrical activity in the brain using electrodes 10 of 21 Example of what it detects? Alpha waves, Beta waves, Delta waves and Theta waves 11 of 21 What do alpha waves indicate? A relaxed state 12 of 21 Beta? Psychological arousal (& in REM) 13 of 21 Delta and Theta? Deeper states of sleep 14 of 21 (+) Used in clinical diagnosis' - can be used to study epileptic seizures etc 15 of 21 (-) Can't measure deeper brain regions (can't pinpoint exact area of electrical activity as would be too invasive) 16 of 21 What do ERPs do? Take raw EEG data and used to investigate cognitive processing of an event 17 of 21 How many recordings? Multiple readings and averages them out 18 of 21 2 types of ERPs? 1) Sensory ERPs (first 100 milliseconds) 2) Cognitive ERPs (after initial 100, reflects processing as stimulus is evaluated) 19 of 21 (+) Can measure stimulus processing in the absence of behavioural responses 20 of 21 (-) Deep brain activity not detected / no. of trials needed 21 of 21
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