PSYC 4600 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Apical Dendrite, Basal Dendrite, Alpha Wave

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 4600
• Professor: Maria Giammarco

Document Summary

Lecture 4: electroencephalography (eeg) & event-related potentials (erp) Methodology for measuring electrical activity in the brain: changes over time in electrical activity can occur very systematically in response to particular stimuli. Measured blood flow changes in the scalp. Realized you can measure electrical activity of the brain by putting electrodes on their scalp. Alpha waves are related to general arousal (ex. when not paying attention, or are drifting) Aligned perpendicular to the surface of the cortex. At rest are negative on inside, positive on outside. When transmitters are binding to the presynaptic neuron this changes the electrical potential of the postsynaptic neuron. This means that pole closest to the skull will either be positive or negative: this is picked up by the eeg. Each neuron produces an electrical potential, that sum together to produce a large electrical potential that can be picked up by the eeg: measuring postsynaptic potentials, not action potentials, measuring electrical signal produced by neural activity.