ERPs are a "mature" technique which has been steadily developing for the last 35 years. This technique has a very good temporal resolution. This makes ERPs particularly useful for studying the time-course of brain events after stimulation or in preparation for response. ERPs can be recorded in a variety of populations, including young children, older subjects, and patient populations.
A major advantage of ERPs is that they can be recorded in most experimental paradigms used in cognitive psychology. A limitation of ERPs is the difficulty of localizing the brain areas involved in their generation. Recently, advancements in this area have been accomplished by using realistic forward modeling of the surface-recorded activity. This can be obtained by combining ERPs and other imaging methodologies (e.g., magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI -- see later). Our Lab has computer software (the EMSE package by Source-Signal Imaging, San Diego) designed to perform this integration, as well as source analysis of ERPs.
