Regarding how talk therapy and meditation could have similar effects on the human brain to medication: we have cognitive subsystems whose behavior is is partial

Regarding how talk therapy and meditation could have similar effects on the human brain to medication: we have cognitive subsystems whose behavior is is partially determined by our 'schemas' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(psychology)), and partially determined by something like coefficients that scale chemical responses to certain mental states arising. Talk therapy (and cognitive behavioral therapy) work by modifying a patient's schemas. For example, suppose you have a schema for human relationships that effectively says "in any relationship there is a winner and a loser"; holding that belief is going to direct the patient's behavior (and interpretation of events) in ways that probably lead to unhappiness. So, by modifying the patient's view on that point (i.e. altering a schema of theirs), this cognitive subsystem that uses schemas to interpret events and decide behavior ends up behaving differently. Drugs (e.g. SSRIs) seem to effect something like the 'coefficients' I mention above—but potentially you could have similar net changes by modifying this cognitive subsystem's coefficients or the schema input it operates on. The importance of schemas in this kind of dynamic seems under-appreciated, though there's evidence of thinkers honing in on it from way back (William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience", for example, is basically a study of this cognitive subsystem I mention. More recently I noticed Carol Dweck discussing schemas as foundational to the theory behind her work on learning styles.) (P.S. I believe learning meditation is essentially non-discursive, totally experiential/empirical schema modification [your beliefs can be modified by arguments or new observations; CBT uses arguments, meditation observations], so that's how I see it relating to the rest of this.)