Neuro Note #1

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

https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight/transcript

https://www.amazon.com/My-Stroke-Insight-Scientists-Personal/dp/0452295548/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0520271440&linkCode=as2&tag=teco06-20

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

                                                                                                                                                            

Public Health

The first thing I learned during Professor Flick’s presentation today is that prevention is a form of intervention. There are 3 types of prevention: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary intervention prevents a condition, disease or injury before it ever occurs. For example, back injury prevention programs or immunizations. Secondary intervention reduces impact of a condition, disease or injury that has already occurred. An example of this is cancer screenings. Tertiary intervention is limiting the impact of an ongoing illness or injury that has lasting effects. An example would be rehabilitation after a stroke.

The second thing I learned during today’s class is the definition of health literacy. Health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Some things that health literacy depends on are communication skills, culture, and demands of healthcare and public health systems. Health literacy affects the client’s ability to navigate the healthcare system, share personal information, engage in self-care and chronic-disease management, and understand concepts such as probability and risk.

OT and Entrepreneurship

I have always been interested in entrepreneurship as a career path, whether it be a product or a company. I found the accessibility app and unbuckle device to be particularly fascinating because they were developed based on the founder's immediate needs (links at bottom). The app was created because many restaurants the wheelchair-bound developer wished to dine in were not handicap accessible. The unbuckle device was created because a grandmother with arthritis struggled to unbuckle her grandchildren's carseat. When I imagined myself being an entrepreneur, I had not considered that most products are created based on personal need of the developer. I had always figured that I would sit down one day and think of a product to create. However, I now realize that it may not happen that methodically. More likely, I will have a problem one day, create a make-shift product to solve the problem, and then realize that the product could be marketed!

Accessibility app:
https://www.thelily.com/a-yelp-for-accessibility-the-app-thats-trying-to-change-the-conversation-about-disability/

Unbuckle Me device:
http://www.ontheair.us/podcast1/episode-15-addressing-a-need-through-ingenuity

Veterans and Art Therapy

I listened to the “Glass Half Full” podcast titled “Warpaints.” In this episode, two OTs talk to a Navy Seal veteran named Rusty Noesner. Rusty was deployed to Afghanistan and sustained two head injuries while he was there – one caused by an explosion and another caused by hitting his head on a rock after free-falling out of a helicopter. Following his return to the U.S., Rusty was treated at Walter Reed. There, he was introduced to art therapy and found that creative expression through art was a very effective form of therapy for him. Rusty explains that during military training, soldier’s brains are re-wired to think/function as a group. Soldier’s are taught to think in black and white. By introducing a creative outlet after returning home, soldiers are then able to introduce “color” back into their brain. Rusty said that making art is a tangible outcome to what has been happening internally. By focusing on the art, the veteran’s brain is able to filter out the noise constantly buzzing through it.

            Rusty has started a nonprofit organization called Warpaints in which art created by veterans is sold online. The profits go directly to the artist. The goal of Warpaints is to encourage veterans to explore and learn ore mediums for art expression. This organization is geared towards “flipping the creative switch” within the veteran’s brain that has been deactivated through military training.

            It is a goal of mine to work with war veterans as well as first responders during my OT career. I find the psychological aspect of combat/trauma to be fascinating and I am eager to do my part to help. Rusty touched on the difficulty many health providers have when suggesting art therapy as a type of therapy. While the term “art therapy” may bring to mind painting and drawing, it is important to mention other aspects of art such as woodworking or metalworking. Many male veterans may view these activities as more “masculine,” and therefore may be more willing to attempt art therapy. According to Rusty, the most important thing to remember when speaking to and working with veterans is that they do not want to feel pitied or placated.