Lesion Method Essay

Neuroscientists have available to them several techniques to understand the relationship between brain and behaviour. However, the lesion method is the best one to establish that an area is involved in a certain task. Lesion studies have been beneficial in identifying these relationships based on examining brain damaged people. This paper will argue the important contributions the lesion method has made to neuroscience while exposing the problems associated with the functional brain imaging technique.
The lesion method is central to neuroscience because it can establish a causal relationship between a brain area and a function. The logic behind this method relies on the idea that people who have brain damage experience a loss in a certain …show more content…
Brain imaging techniques, such as fMRIs, can lead to the possibility for misinterpretation. These techniques infer a structure-function relationship based on measuring brain activity. More specifically, fMRIs measure blood flow in the brain (Rorden & Karnath, 2004, pg. 815) For researchers to know which areas are involved in performing a behaviour, they must measure blood flow in the brain. This is done by having participants perform several different tasks (Rorden & Karnath, 2004, pg. 814). It is believed that areas assumed to be involved in a specific task will show an increase in blood flow (Fellows et al., 2005, pg. 851). However, this assumption can prove to be misleading because activated areas may be presumed to be related to the task when, in fact, they are not (Fellows et al., 2005, pg. 851). On the other hand, areas that are not activated may be overlooked as being unrelated to the task when, actually, they are important (Rorden & Karnath, 2004, pg. 815). fMRIs are not able to differentiate between activated areas that are important from those that are not (Rorden & Karnath, 2004, pg. 815). This, in turn, restricts the researcher from concluding a single structure, or structures, as having a definite link with a