"The frontal lobes are important for voluntary movement, expressive language and for managing higher level executive functions. Executive functions refer to a collection of cognitive skills including the capacity to plan, organise, initiate, self-monitor and control one's responses in order to achieve a goal"

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/forever-young-meditation-might-slow-the-age-related-loss-of-gray-matter-in-the-brain-say-ucla-researchers

Link to an article that breaks down the scientific study included in this article in a more plain, informal manner. A layman's summary

There is a link between decrease in gray matter and dementia as well, so mediation would decrease risks for that.

Randomized control is good because it leads to low bias in studies.

The amygdala help regulate emotion and encode memories—especially when it comes to more emotional remembrances. (Source https://www.dana.org/article/beyond-emotion-understanding-the-amygdalas-role-in-memory/#:~:text=The%20amygdalae%2C%20a%20pair%20of,comes%20to%20more%20emotional%20remembrances.)

It should be noted that in a separate study it was shown that mediation had higher effects on decreasing depression than things like exercise or aroma therapy, but did not rank higher than antidepressants.

damaged or reduced gray matter is linked to Alzheimer's, so could mediation prevent that?

Would memes be protected under fair use because they could be considered parody, commentary, or criticism? It's unclear to me whether or not profit determines if work can be copied, or if it's the amount of attention it receives.

I thought this was interesting because I didn't know that memes could be acknowledged as a form of communication and that would then put them under the limits placed on speech. It also raises the question of, if memes can be considered communication, then do things like live streaming and twitter threads count as communication, and are they subject to privacy and the limits of speech?

I thought this was interesting because it's a really good summary of a lot of the issues with social media today. Even beyond how companies track people's usage and sell data, people are very comfortable on the internet because it's not a face to face interaction and that leads to oversteps like this that would never happen in real life. People become performers almost on social media, so instead of thinking of social media as a thing that affects real people, they see it as a stage and so they act accordingly and leads to situations like these.

I thought this was another key part of the issue with social media: how the same situation affects people differently. People think that because others benefitted with it from interviews and attention, it was a good situation, but the women on the plane was subjected to a lot of the double standards that affect women in American society and so this unasked for attention has actually become harmful to her. Even if they had asked for consent to share the story, this situation could have happened and it's interesting how posting online is a gamble depending on who you are.

electroencephalogram patterns, or EEGs are the brain's electrical pulses and can be measured as the brain's activity. Other studies suggest that prolonged meditation has anti-depressant like qualities, and though did not ranks as high as anti-depressants in curing depression, were the next highest ranking solution.

"This brain center manages higher order brain function, like increased awareness, concentration, and decision making. Changes in the brain show, with meditation, higher-order functions become stronger, while lower-order brain activities decrease. In other words, you have the power to train your brain."

https://askthescientists.com/brain-meditation/

I thought this was interesting because even though McGarrity says that they don't work Black Lives Matter because it's an ideology, the amount of police resistance and government pushback that happened during the protests doesn't fall into line with what he's saying.

I thought this was interesting because it mentioned "Emotion-producing," which made me consider how if a story does produce an emption, was it trying to do that? Was that the specific emotion they wanted? And if it was, for what purpose? I thought it was interesting because it made me realize how a website could be manipulative or influencing without me consciously thinking about it, and always checking if the site is the right site, credible, and backed up can reveal if that emotion was manipulative for poor intentions, or just good writing trying to get you to engage with the article.

Gertrude Stein was an American born poet and playwright who moved to Paris and became best known for her literary salon and modernist writings in Paris. Unrelated to E.E. Cummings, but she was also painted by Picasso.

Most landscape paintings in Europe before Monet had a heavy focus on religion, and often were gothic or had strong influences from the Renaissance.