A cognitive neuroscientist wants to investigate the brain's millisecond-by-millisecond neural response to a specific, repeated auditory tone, filtering out general background brain activity.
Which method of studying the brain is most appropriate for this investigation, and what is a primary limitation of this method?
Event-related potentials (ERPs); they provide excellent temporal resolution (<1 ms< 1\text{ ms}<1 ms) to isolate specific sensory responses, but suffer from poor spatial resolution.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); it provides excellent spatial resolution (1–2 mm1\text{--}2\text{ mm}1–2 mm), but suffers from poor temporal resolution (1–5 s1\text{--}5\text{ s}1–5 s).
Electroencephalogram (EEG); it provides excellent spatial resolution (<1 mm< 1\text{ mm}<1 mm) to locate deep brain structures, but cannot isolate specific cognitive responses.
Post-mortem examinations; they provide excellent anatomical detail at a cellular level, but cannot record real-time neural activity in a living participant.
20 exam-style questions on AQA A Level Psychology Ways of studying the brain (A-level only). Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.