PSYC31H3 Chapter 2: Chapter 2 Notes
Document Summary
Laboratory techniques for assessing brain function: early instrument for studying brian function that remains in use: electrophysiological. Freq/patterns affected by brain diseases, also been used to study aspects of normal cognition: ex. Freq rates have been associated with attentional activity for decades: diagnose seizure disorders and sleep disturbances, monitor depth of anesthesia. Identify hemispheric specialization and assess processing speed and efficiency: meg. More precise in identifying source of epileptic discharges in patients with a seizure disorder. Expensive, cost ay be prohibitive especially for clinical applications. Technique has not entered into regular clinical usage. Meg and eeg provide very high fidelity measurements of temporal aspects of neural activity, but neither has good spatial resolution. Develop brain mapping application: source localization problems. Hard to know exact neural source of signals produced by these techniques especially if signals originate in deeper brain structures: electrodermal activity. Sensitive and robust measure of emotional responses and feelings.
