o Neuroscience - Serving for study of relationship between brain and behaviour
Neuroscience Methods
techniques
for physiological psychology
- An ideal method?
o Overview and electrophysiological methods:
o Spatial resolution : cellular level
o Transcranial omagnetic stimulation
Temporal (TMS)
resolution : millisecond scale
o EEG and event related potential (ERP)
o Whole brain studied simultaneously
o magnetic resonance oimaging : structural and function (fMRI)
Non invasive
o neuropsychology based on lesion studies
o Match existing methods, all with certain limitations, to the research
question
o Microscopic o Brain segmented according to appearance in microscope
anatomy (cytoarchitectonics)
o Combined with comparative neuroanatomy
o Appearance reflects type of cells (e.g. inputs vs outputs)
o Type of cell sometimes correlates with function
o Studies restricted to small number of brains
o
o TMS vs other
methods
This method has millisecond temporal resolution like EEG based methods and
like fMRI can resolve within cortical maps. TMS combines the advantages of
these methods, however TMS can only be applied to a single location at any
given time point (whereas fMRI and EEG record from simultaneously from brain
locations across the brain).
, Cornell notes template
- Stimulator placed above the scalp containing a coil of wire
- Brief pulse of high electrical current fed through the coil
- Result: magnetic field: with flux lines perpendicular to the plane of the
coil
- Magnetic field induces electric field perpendicular to magnetic field
- Electrical field leads to neuronal excitation within the brain (trans-
cranial)
- Non-invasive, painless , safe stimulation of human brain cortex –
literally “through the skull” Anthony Baker 1984 … useful to study (1)
behaviour during virtual brain lesions (2) chronometry (3) functional
connectivity
o Transcranial
magnetic
stimulation - Two examples of coil positions : placed over the sensorimotor cortex
(TMS) (parietal areas 3,1,2 next to frontal area 4) and placed over visual cortex
(striate cortex in occipital area 17 and extrastriate cortex in areas 18
and 19)
- Motor cortex stimulation :
- Activates corticospinal neurons trans-synaptically
- Example: TMS coil 5cm lateral from vertex> often contralat thumb
twitches (20ms post TMS)
o TMS effects - record motor EPs (surface EMG, target muscle relaxed)
depend on - record silent period in contracted target muscles – 150ms after motor
stimulation cortex stimulation, cortical mechanisms
site - occipital cortex stimulation:
- excitatory effects e.g. phosphenes, inhibitory effects: suppression of
motion perception and letter identification
- somatosensory cortex stimulation:
o How to - may elicit tingling, block the detection of peripheral stimuli (tactile,
measure pain)
effects of - can modify somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs). Somatorsenory
TMS? cortex has a wide layer IV.
- auditory cortex stimulation:
- interpretation of results challenging: loud coil click
- frontal cortex stimulation:
- effects on subject’s mood? Potential for therapeutic use?
- Spatial resolution?
- TMS to neighbouring sites of motor homunculus activates different
lower arm muscles (thumb vs little finger twitches).
- Effects measured as peripheral responses, as impaired or altered
perception, as improved or impaired task performance, or as brain’s
direct response (detected in EEG, PET, fMRI)
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