PSY100H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Radioactive Tracer, Mirror Test
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PSY100H1 Full Course Notes
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Part 1: studying the brain in the laboratory. Studying the brain in the lab: psychologists are often interesting in the neural circuitry of behaviours. Electroencephalogram (eeg: different dots are different areas of the brain (with appropriate colours) Is a device which measures electrical activity in specific brain regions. Is useful in studies of epilepsy, arousal, sleep and states of consciousness: ex. If a population of neurons is shown to be active on an fmri scan during a behaviour, those neurons may be involved in that behaviour. In pet, a synthetic radiotracer is injected into the patient: the radiotracer generates a signal in the brain that can be measure with specialized equipment, many different radiotracers are available and can be used for different imaging purposes. If we inject a radiotracer such as fludeooxyglucose, our pet signal reflect glucose metabolism and thus neuronal activity: modelled after glucose, measure consumption of sugar.
