What Can fMRI Add to the ERP Story?

Abstract

For decades and up to now, event-related potentials (ERPs) have been successfully used in the investigation of human brain function, both in healthy subjects and in patients with neuropsychiatric diseases, and are still among the mainstays of noninvasive neuroscience. They offer objective measurements of brain activity with a high temporal resolution. However, they are limited concerning their spatial information. Accordingly, several methods have been developed to estimate the underlying neural generators, and further strategies have been applied in order to gain information about the ERP generation based on lesion studies or intracranial measurements. The combination of ERPs and fMRI is successfully used today in terms of adding high spatial information to ERP research. In this chapter, the possibilities and limitations of combining EEG with fMRI are discussed within the historical context of ERP research.