For my first neuro note, I watched a TED Talk by Jill Bolte
Taylor titled “My Stroke of Insight.” Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuroscientist who
had a first-hand neurological experience to study – her own stroke. She was
able to tune into her own mind and participate in her stroke in a way I’ve
never heard of before. Her descriptions of the hemispheres and her experiences
with each were what astonished me. Jill described the right hemisphere as a
lens through which we see ourselves as “energy beings.” The left hemisphere is
what separates us from the energy of the universe as well as the energy of
others, the “I am...” portion of the brain. Through the left hemisphere, we
hear “brain chatter,” the voice in the back of our minds.
During Jill’s TED Talk, she takes us through her stroke,
step by step. Because her stroke was in the left hemisphere, Jill experienced
an overload from the right hemisphere. She described no longer feeling the
boundaries of her own body, blending with the molecules and energy of her
surroundings. She expanded into the space around her and felt an immense
pleasure of peace. Her “brain chatter” stopped and she felt like she was in “la
la land.” She felt euphoric.
As the stroke was happening, she could not remember her
office phone number to call for help. When looking through her stack of
business cards, she saw pixels instead of words and numbers. When dialing the
phone, she saw squiggles where the numbers would be. 45 minutes later when she
was finally able to dial the correct number, she could not understand her colleague
or speak to him. She had lost the ability to speak and to understand language –
a key function of the left hemisphere. She recalls thinking that her and her
colleagues sounded like golden retrievers when they were speaking to one another.
On the ambulance ride to the hospital, Jill remembers that her
spirit left her body, leaving it up to the EMTs and medical personnel to revive
her. When she awoke in the hospital, Jill felt an overload of her senses. The
sounds were loud and indistinguishable and the light burned her eyes. She again
lost recognition of her body’s boundaries and felt enormous, filling the hospital
room. Once again, Jill felt euphoric.
After an eight-year recovery, Jill has a new outlook on
life. She asked which hemisphere we live in. Are we part of the flow of the
universe’s energy (in the right hemisphere) or are we an individual, separate from
the universe (in the left hemisphere)? At the end of her TED Talk, Jill encouraged
all of us to “step to the right of our left hemisphere,” to try and experience
the euphoria that she had experienced while her left hemisphere was out of
commission. She said that she “believes that the more time we spend choosing to
run the deep inner-peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we
will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.”
I choose this video because wouldn’t we all like to know
what certain scary experiences are like without actually experiencing them
ourselves. Based on the description of the video, I thought that because she
was a neuroscientist, she would explain her experience thought MRI scans and
the more scientific, biological aspects of the stroke. However, I found myself
relating to her experience. I consider myself very in-tune with my body. I can
tell you where a pimple will be a week before it comes in. I can tell you where
my cellulite deposits are without looking, because I can feel them. I can even
tell you when my eyebrow hairs are looking crazy because I can feel them
standing up in odd positions. If I ever have a stroke, I would imagine myself
experiencing it much like Jill did.
I have learned about the roles and functions right and left
hemispheres in school and I have made a conscious effort to use both hemispheres,
to balance the rigid and methodic plans of the left with the more free-flowing,
creative aspects of the right. However, inevitably, I have found myself
thinking “wow, that was really left-brained of me.” While I do not wish to have
a stroke, I am very curious as to how it would feel to only experience functions
from one side of the brain or the other. Multiple times, Jill described having
reached a euphoria or a nirvana during her stroke. Was this because her left
brain was turned off? As I was listening to her speech, I could not help but
wonder if this was similar to the euphoria that is produced by drugs. Do some
drugs create this effect by silencing the left hemisphere, leaving the right
hemisphere to create this feeling? Was it the endorphins and other hormones
released in realizing she was having a stroke that created the nirvana? Similar
to how grandmothers can lift cars off of trapped babies? The brain is a beautiful
and fascinating thing and I highly recommend anyone who is at all interested to
check out Jill’s TED Talk or her book, also called My Stroke of Insight! Links
below
References:
Taylor, J. B. (2008,
February). Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke
of insight. Retrieved from
https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight
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