Signs of Mental Activity: An Essential Guidebook

Extract

Event Related Potentials: A Methods Handbook. Todd C. Handy (Ed.). 2005. Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT Press, 404 pp., $60.00.

The dramatic increase in interest in functional magnetic resonance imaging in recent years has been accompanied by a wealth of literature on the scientific foundations of the procedure and the highly complex methodological issues that must be considered during experimental design and data analysis. To some extent, progress in this exciting area has eclipsed significant developments in other areas of neuroimaging, particularly the “neuromagnetic” approaches that study time-locked brain electrical potentials or magnetic field changes produced in the course of processing perceptual, cognitive, and motor events. However, there has been increasing recognition that the study of event-related electrical potentials and neuromagnetic responses remains a critical complement to “hemodynamic” approaches because of their exquisite temporal resolution and because they provide a more direct index of neural activity related to stimulus events than procedures dependent on the coupling of brain activity with cerebral blood flow. In this context, Event Related Potentials: A Methods Handbook, edited by Todd C. Handy, represents an important and long overdue handbook. It provides practical and concise information on ERP methods that is comparable to literature available for fMRI techniques.