Neuroimaging Psycholinguistics

until recent advent of non-invasive medical techniques, brain surgery preferred way language researchers discover how language works in brain. example, severing corpus callosum (the bundle of nerves connects 2 hemispheres of brain) @ 1 time treatment forms of epilepsy. researchers study ways in comprehension , production of language affected such drastic surgery. illness made brain surgery necessary, language researchers had opportunity pursue research.

newer, non-invasive techniques include brain imaging positron emission tomography (pet); functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri); event-related potentials (erps) in electroencephalography (eeg) , magnetoencephalography (meg); , transcranial magnetic stimulation (tms). brain imaging techniques vary in spatial , temporal resolutions (fmri has resolution of few thousand neurons per pixel, , erp has millisecond accuracy). each type of methodology presents set of advantages , disadvantages studying particular problem in psycholinguistics.