Post-Mortem Examinations

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about post-mortem examinations, focusing in particular on: (i) post-mortem examinations as the oldest form of brain imaging; (ii) their relatively uncommon use cases, typically limited to when a person has died under suspicious circumstances and the examination is requested for forensic reasons; (iii) the role of post-mortem examinations in scientific research by investigating the brain damage suspected to be the cause of a behaviour of interest; (iv) the practical challenges in post-mortem examinations, including extracting the brain from the dura mater and changing the brain tissue texture into a manageable one using formalin; (v) the general structure of the brain including its hemispheres, the longitudinal fissure, and its wrinkled cortex; (vi) the insights into brain region functionality that post-mortem examinations can provide, highlighting the work of Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke; (vii) the importance of finding double dissociations in neuropsychological research; (viii) some key strengths and limitations of post-mortem examinations as a brain imaging technique.

About the lecturer

Dr Gaby Pfeifer is a lecturer in biological psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Southampton. Dr Pfeifer’s research interests lie in the mind-body interactions which regulate thoughts and feelings, linking biological and cognitive processes. Dr Pfeifer’s recent publications include ‘Reduced visual and frontal cortex activation during visual working memory in grapheme-colour synaesthetes relative to young and older adults’ (2019) and ‘Relationship between interoceptive sensibility, age, and COVID-19 anxiety during the first national lockdown in the United Kingdom’ (2021).