Physiological Approach Research Method - Biological Methods.

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Physiological Approach

Research Method #1: Biological Methods

        This research method can also be divided into two smaller groups: Invasive and Non-Invasive Method. Invasive method basically involves the actual cutting and damaging of a brain, while non-invasive method revolves around scanning a fully functional brain with different devices.

Invasive Method

        The invasive method can also be broken down into two smaller groups: lesions and ablations surgery. Ablation surgery is the process of actually removing a part of a brain, whilst lesions surgery involves damaging a part of the brain with electrodes. Most of these methods however, are done on animals, usually because of ethical issues. Surgery is still done on human brains, although they are only used to help the patients more than to experiment on them.

Evaluation

Advantages: There were quite a few tests that were done on humans, where it’s quite safe for us to make a few reasonable conclusions with. Also, when using animals, the researchers can damage a specific part of a brain to see what happens. Usually, we can conclude a few things about humans from tests on animals.

Disadvantages: The biggest disadvantage of this method is that the actual tests are not carried out on humans. Although humans and other mammals have many similarities, they also have many differences. Thalidomide was a drug that was tested on rabbits, where the results were perfectly fine. However, when they were used by pregnant women, their babies were affected by the drug.

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        Another disadvantage is that when the tests are done on humans, their brains are already damaged. That means that the researchers won’t be able to damage one particular part of the brain.

        Sometimes, this method is criticized for not looking at natural behaviour of people. Some psychologists even suggest that this method doesn’t explain much at all, and there probably are other factors involved.

Non-Invasive Method

        There are two main different ways of non-invasive methods; EEG and Brain Scanning. These methods don’t involve any entering of the brain, but rather scanning it. EEG, or Electroencephalogram, is used to measure ...

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