Parts of measurement devices
Units of measure
Gross Brain Anatomy
Alphabet soup
Fine Neuroanatomy & Misc
100
This is an electrical contact used to measure voltage in EEG or ECoG.
What is an electrode?
100
The size of a typical voxel in fMRI
what is 2 x 2 x 2 mm (or 3 x 3 x 3 mm)?
100
The principal function of this lobe is visual perception.
What is the occipital lobe?
100
An analysis technique that uses a pattern of brain activity measured by fMRI to deduce what the stimulus was.
What is MVPA? (Multi-voxel pattern analysis)
100
This is the name for the long protrusion that allows a neuron to send electrical signals over long distances.
What is an axon?
200
This is the placement scheme for EEG or fNIRS contacts
What is the 10/20 system?
200
Sampling rate or temporal resolution is expressed in this unit.
What is Hertz?
200
The principal functions of this lobe are audition (hearing), language, and memory.
What is the temporal lobe?
200
This is one of the principal types of EEG experiments, and involves measuring responses to the same condition (or conditions) many times over.
What is ERP? (Event-Related Potential)
200
This is one way to "cheat" at brain machine interfaces
What is: (1) measure something else besides the brain to augment the device (2) allow device & user to learn and (3) build a robot (a device that can take a simple or noisy input and translate it into a complex or corrected output, (e.g. autocorrect)
300
This is the name for the small magnetic field sensors that are the newest, most promising way to do MEG portably and with high spatial resolution.
What is 'optically pumped magnetometers'?
300
The resting membrane potential of a neuron is about this.
What is -80 millivolts?
300
This medial temporal lobe structure is commonly associated with memory and navigation.
What is the hippocampus?
300
This is the cheapest form of brain stimulation, which passes a weak current across the brain to potentiate or inhibit brain activity over a relatively large area.
What is TDCS? (Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation)
300
This is the name of one of the three potential future technologies that involve recording voltage from the brain with electrodes (any will do).
What is neural dust, neuropixels, or neuralink?
400
These are the electromagnets that cause the strength of the main magnetic field to vary over space in an MRI scanner.
What are gradient coils?
400
The length of time it takes an fMRI scanner to scan the brain once.
What is 2 seconds?
400
The principal functions of the cerebellum include these.
What are coordination and balance?
400
This is the face-selective ERP component that can be measured on occipital or parieto-occipital electrodes in EEG.
What is the N170?
400
This is the name for the level of depolarization of the membrane potential that results in an action potential.
What is the threshold?
500
This is the part of an MRI scanner that "zaps" the brain with light at a particular frequency.
What is the RF transmit / receive coil
500
The units on the Y axis in plots of ERPs.
What are microvolts?
500
This is one function subserved by this area.
What is regulation of breathing, heart rate, sleep, & other bodily functions.
500
This technique measures changes in the structure of the brain over weeks or months.
What is VBM? (Voxel-based morphometry)
500
This is one important criterion for judging whether to trust claims about new brain measurement devices
What is the involvement of credentialed experts, or the availibility of data about the device.