Ib Psychology

Ans: Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of biological correlates of mental processes (cognition). This area of research investigates how various brain areas involved in cognitive processes

Ans: The two areas involved in the study of neuroscience are cognition and physiology.

Ans: Three areas neurocognitive psychologists are examining with regard to meditation on attention, emotional reactivity and stress.

Ans: MBSR stand for mindfulness –based stress reduction, which may influence brain functions. It's the cognitively aware stress reduction methods, including meditation.

Ans:Self-regulation of practice is part of the MBSR meditation process and it involves interaction between cognition and physiology. This self-regulation may influence brain functions like emotional reactivity and stress and has many physiological benefits such as stress reduction. The Vestergaard-Poulsen et al shows that self-regulation of attention (meditation) change the structure of the lower brain stem (controls control of respiration and circadian rhythm). It helps reduce the level of cortisol levels, which slow down the cardiac and breathing rhythm.

Ans: Some of the physiological benefits of MBSR includes stress reduction, increase in positive emotion and immune responses and help alleviate pain. These benefits take place when cortisol levels are reduced and the cardiac and breathing rhythm slow down

Ans: The central aim of the Davidson et al (2004) study is to investigate whether meditation can change brain activity. The name of the study is Brain waves and compassion meditation.

Ans: Eight monks with years of practice in meditation participated in this study. In addition, a control group of ten students who had only one week of practice in meditation also participated.When neurons fire, cognitive activities (including mediation) produced electrical activity, and then it was recorded by the electroencephalogram (EEG). So that electroencephalogram (EEG) was an useful instrument to use in this study.

Ans: The participants were asked to meditate on “unconditional compassion”. For example, they open the mind for feelings of love and compassion for short periods.

Ans: In a training session, they were asked to think of someone they cared about and to let their mind be invaded by love and compassion After initial training, they were asked to generate an objective feeling of compassion without focusing on anyone in particular.

Ans: It shows that the monk's brains showed greater activation, organization and coordination of gamma waves.This shows that there is a positive correlation between hours of practicing meditation and level of gamma waves.

Ans: Since gamma waves is related to conscious perception, thoughts and memories, as well as binding it together---> the better organization and coordination of gamma rays shows that the monks are able to memorize better as well as coordination between their perception, memories and thoughts.

The result support the idea that attention and affective processes are skills what can be trained

Ans: Another alternative explanation of the Davidson study is that the change in brain waves is caused by hours of training and not by the individual differences before training.

Ans: The central finding of the Vestergaard- Poulsen et al (2009) study is that extensive practice of meditation involving sustained attention could lead to changes in brain structure.