Event-Related Potentials (ERP's)

What exactly are event-related potentials (ERP's)? In this post I will give an overview of the ERP techniques. Because the high temporal resulution of the electrophysiology of ERP it is a technique that is well suited for studying attention and perception (Woodward, 2010). ERP's have a temporal resolution that can assess upon to the millisecond. However, unlike fMRI, the spatial resolution is low. The electrophysical recordings provide a direct measurement of the brain processes that we can study, for example in the domain of perception and attention. ERP's are for the most part generated by the post-synaptic potentials associated with pyramidal cells. Because the specific neural generator in our brains we have the possibility to make a prediction of the way of voltage that can be seen across the head. ERP's gives us the possibility to asses the cognitive operations already before a stimulus is given.