🧠 Brain regions and electrodes
Tap a part of the brain to see what it does, the electrodes over it and the rhythms recorded there.
From the left side (face on the left)
From above (nose at the top)
Tap a region
Tap or focus a coloured region on the side view to see what it does, which electrodes sit over it and which rhythms you record there.
- Electrodes over it
- Rhythms you often see
- Linked in research and clinics to
How to read this
- Side view: each colour is a part of the cortex. Tap one, or move to it with Tab and press Enter.
- Top view: the 21 electrodes of the 10–20 system. The ones over the region you picked light up, so you can see which channels "look at" which part of the brain.
- Deep parts: the limbic system and the cerebellum are drawn with dashed edges. They are far from the scalp or folded away, so scalp EEG sees them poorly, if at all.
- The "linked to" lists are areas where changes are often reported. A single EEG pattern never names a disease on its own.
Key terms
- Lobe
- One of the four big parts of each half of the cortex: frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital.
- Central sulcus
- The groove between the motor strip (in front) and the touch strip (behind).
- 10–20 system
- The standard way to place 21 electrodes, spaced at 10% and 20% of the distances across the head.
- Odd and even
- Odd numbers are on the left (F3, C3), even on the right (F4, C4), and z on the middle line (Fz, Cz, Pz).
Sources
- Purves D. et al., eds. Neuroscience, 2nd ed. Sinauer, 2001 (NCBI Bookshelf): the lobes and their main jobs.
- Koessler L. et al. (2009). Automated cortical projection of EEG sensors: anatomical correlation via the international 10–10 system. NeuroImage 46(1): 64–72.
- Jasper H. H. (1958). The ten-twenty electrode system of the International Federation. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 10: 371–375.
Used in lessons 5, 6 of EEG from zero.