Editing Event-related potential (section)

==Advantages and disadvantages==

===Relative to behavioral measures===
Compared with behavioral procedures, ERPs provide a continuous measure of processing between a stimulus and a response, making it possible to determine which stage(s) are being affected by a specific experimental manipulation. Another advantage over behavioral measures is that they can provide a measure of processing of stimuli even when there is no behavioral change. However, because of the significantly small size of an ERP, it usually takes a large number of trials to accurately measure it correctly.<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Luck S |year=2005 |chapter=Comparison with Behavioral Measures |title=An Introduction to the Event-Related Potential Technique |publisher=MIT Press |pages=21–23 }}</ref>

===Relative to other neurophysiological measures===

====Invasiveness====
Unlike microelectrodes, which require an electrode to be inserted into the brain, and [[Positron emission tomography|PET]] scans that expose humans to radiation, ERPs use EEG, a non-invasive procedure.

====Spatial and temporal resolution====

ERPs provide excellent [[temporal resolution]]—as the speed of ERP recording is only constrained by the sampling rate that the recording equipment can feasibly support, whereas [[hemodynamic]] measures (such as [[fMRI]], [[Positron emission tomography|PET]], and [[functional near infrared spectroscopy|fNIRS]]) are inherently limited by the slow speed of the [[Blood-oxygen-level dependent|BOLD]] response. The [[spatial resolution]] of an ERP, however, is much poorer than that of hemodynamic methods—in fact, the location of ERP sources is an [[inverse problem]] that cannot be exactly solved, only estimated. Thus, ERPs are well suited to research questions about the speed of neural activity, and are less well suited to research questions about the location of such activity.<ref name="Luck" />

===Cost===

ERP research is much cheaper to do than other imaging techniques such as [[fMRI]], [[Positron emission tomography|PET]], and [[Magnetoencephalography|MEG]]. This is because purchasing and maintaining an EEG system is less expensive than the other systems.