Researchers still use electrodes piggybacked on electrodes used in epileptic patients. However, they do not *move them around for a few minutes to take experimental measurements*. They are required by law to leave them where the surgeons place them: the electrodes need to stay in until the patient has had enough seizures to properly triangulate the source of the epilepsy. In the meantime, the (smaller) electrode arrays can be recorded from and the patients undergo neuroscience experiments just like any other people hooked up to EEGs, are shown pictures or asked to squeeze balls or whatever. The difference is these electrodes can actually focus (through statistical clustering) on action potentials fired by individual neurons around each electrode, leading to more discoveries about what happens on the systemic level, as opposed to the much cruder EEG/MRI data.
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Researchers still use electrodes piggybacked on electrodes used in epileptic patients. However, they do not *move them around for a few minutes to take experimental measurements*. They are required by law to leave them where the surgeons place them: the electrodes need to stay in until the patient has had enough seizures to properly triangulate the source of the epilepsy. In the meantime, the (smaller) electrode arrays can be recorded from and the patients undergo neuroscience experiments just like any other people hooked up to EEGs, are shown pictures or asked to squeeze balls or whatever. The difference is these electrodes can actually focus (through statistical clustering) on action potentials fired by individual neurons around each electrode, leading to more discoveries about what happens on the systemic level, as opposed to the much cruder EEG/MRI data.