Book resources
Jill Bolte Taylor and the brain hemispheres
Jill Bolte Taylor’s personal experience
An excerpt from the book
“When talking about hemispheres and left hemisphere disorders, we must highlight the case of Jill Bolte Taylor, an American neuroscientist who, while studying the structural and functional differences between the brains of healthy people and those of people with some kind of disorder such as bipolar disorders or schizophrenia, had the possibility, in her own words, ‘to experiment live with her own brain’.
The stroke and its effects
One morning, when she got up to go to work, she had a stroke that affected her left hemisphere, annulling a good part of its functions. She was able to survive and later recounted how her perception of the world changed as the stroke progressed at that precise moment.
Losing the functions of the left hemisphere
She noticed that something was not right and decided to call 911, then the left hemisphere stopped performing its functions due to the stroke. She was unable to recognize phone numbers, which became unconnected symbols.
The right hemisphere takes over
And after a few minutes all the rational and linguistic part of the left hemisphere was gone, and only the right hemisphere was in control.
Then her thoughts ceased to contain words, they were only images, sensations and an explosion of perceptions that she had never experienced before. According to her, she started to perceive the vibration of matter itself and embraced the nature of consciousness from a side she had never experienced before.
Reflecting on the hemispheres: the dominance of the left
To conclude this section, it is clear that both hemispheres are necessary for life, as we understand it.
That makes us think that our day-to-day life is totally dominated by the functions of the left hemisphere, so perhaps we have forgotten some of the possible ways to connect with our consciousness, which allows us to perceive and process information in a different way than most people have developed.”
Her talk
Jill Bolte Taylor told the story of her experience in a TED talk that became famous, “My stroke of insight”. You can watch it here.
Do you feel this is going to become part of your life?
Not as something to achieve or to teach, but as a way of living.