Luck-An Introduction to the ERP Technique

The event-related potential (ERP) technique has been around for decades, but it still seems to be growing in popularity. In the 1960s and 1970s, most ERP researchers were trained in neuroscience-oriented laboratories with a long history of human and animal electrophysiological research. With the rise of cogni- tive neuroscience and the decline of computer prices in the 1980s, however, many people with no previous experience in electro- physiology began setting up their own ERP labs. This was an im- portant trend, because these researchers brought considerable expertise from other areas of science and began applying ERPs to a broader range of issues. However, they did not benefit from the decades of experience that had accumulated in the long-standing electrophysiology laboratories. In addition, many standard ERP techniques are often taken for granted because they were worked out in the 1960s and 1970s, so new ERP researchers often do not learn the reasons why a given method is used (e.g., why we use tin or silver/silver-chloride electrodes).