Evaluation Ways Of Studying The Brain Flashcards
What are the strengths of FMRI as a way of studying the brain?
-Non-invasive and doesn’t expose the brain to potentially harmful radiation.
-Offers a more objective and reliable measure of psychological processes than is possible with verbal reports.
What are limitations of using FMRI, as ways of studying the brain?
-because fMRI measures changes in blood flow in the brain, it is not a direct measure of neural activity in particular brain areas.
-critics argue, the FMRI, overlooks the networked nature of brain activity as it focuses on localised activity in the brain.
Give advantages of using EEG as a way of studying the brain.
-provides a recording of the brain activity in real time, rather than still image of the passive brain, meaning that the researcher can accurately measure a particular task or activity with the brain activity associated with it.
-Peaceful in clinical diagnosis, e.g) recording the abnormal neural activity associated with epilepsy, which helps diagnose someone experiencing seizures with epilepsy.
What are the disadvantages of using EEG as ways of studying the brain?
-Because EEG can only detect activity in superficial regions of the brain. It cannot reveal what’s going on in the deeper regions, such as hypothalamus or hippocampus, as electrodes cannot be planted into humans to do this, because it would be too invasive.
-Electro activity can only be picked up by several neighbouring electrodes. Therefore, EEG signal is not useful for pinpointing the exact source of an activity. As a result, it does not allow researchers to distinguish between activities originating in different but closely adjacent locations of the brain.
Give the advantages of using ERP as a way of studying the brain.
-ERP’s provide a continuous measure of processing in response to particular stimulus, making it possible to determine how processing is affected by specific experimental manipulation, for example, during presentation of different stimuli.
-Can measure the processing of stimuli, even in the absence of behavioural responses. They make it possible to monitor conversely the processing of a particular stimulus without requiring the person to respond to them.
Give the disadvantages of using ERP as a way of studying the brain.
-because ERP is so small and difficult to pick out from other electrical activity in the brain, it requires a large number of trials to gain meaningful data which places limitations on the type of question, the ERP readings can realistically answer.
-only significantly strong voltage changes generated across the scalp, a recordable, meaning activities occurring deeper in the brain and not recorded. So the generation of ERP tends to be restricted to the Neo cortex.
Give me advantages of post-mortem examinations.
-allow for a more detailed examination of anatomical and neuro chemical aspects of the brain that isn’t possible with non-invasive scanning techniques, which enables researchers to examine deeper regions of the brain such as hippocampus and hypothalamus.
Give the disadvantages of using post more examinations as a way of studying the brain.
-because people die in a variety circumstances at varying stages of disease, these factors can influence the post-mortem brain. Similarly, the length of time between death and the post-mortem drug treatments and age of death are possibly confounding variables of any difference between cases and controls.
-this approaches limited because it’s retrospective as the persons already dead, meaning that the researcher is unable to follow up on anything that arises from the post-mortem concerning a possible relationship between abnormalities and cognitive functioning.
