Examine Interaction Between Cognition and Physiology in Terms of Behavior. Evaluate Two Relevant Studies.

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In order to answer this question, relevant studies will be described and evaluated. The point is to dig deeper into the interaction between cognition and physiology in terms of behavior, and to find out whether if it is possible to make generalizations from the studies used. An empirical study by Davidson (2004) was carried out with the aim to examine whether if meditation could affect the activity in the human brain. For the procedure, he collected 8 very experienced monks, who had meditated for more than 10,000 hours, and 10 volunteers who had been training meditation for one week only. Both monks and volunteers were then told to meditate on love and compassion while being PET-scanned. Davidson discovered in the results that 2 of the volunteers (controls) and all of the monks had an increase in the number of gamma waves during meditation. After ending meditation, it showed that the controls’ number of gamma waves went back to normal, while the experienced monks’ stayed high. The monks’ synchronized area of gamma waves turned out to be larger than the corresponding activation of the volunteers’. From this, Davidson argued that meditation could cause long-term effects on the human brain, leading to the implication that the human brain is affected by environment and own thinking - and therefore is able to adapt to certain stimulations. The experiment does support the theory of interaction between cognition and physiology, because of the results showing a permanent change in the monks’ brain and not in the controls’. Gamma waves - or the activity of this in the brain is what binds perception, memories, and thought together. It has through empirical studies (e.g. Benasich, 2008) been made probable that development of gamma wave activity in the brain has a connection to and possibility to improve cognitive and language skills. Since these two factors are important

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