Stroke of insight Jill Bolte Taylor
[Music]
I grew up to study the brain because I
have a brother who has been diagnosed
with a brain disorder schizophrenia and
as a sister and later as a scientist I
wanted to understand why is it that I
can take my dreams I can connect them to
my reality and I can make my dreams come
true what is it about my brother’s brain
and his schizophrenia that he cannot
connect his dreams to a common and
shared reality so they instead become
delusion so I dedicated my career to
research into the severe mental
illnesses and I moved from my home state
of Indiana to Boston where I was working
in the lab of dr. Francine Venice in the
Harvard Department of Psychiatry and in
the lab we were asking the question what
are the biological differences between
the brains of individuals who would be
diagnosed as normal control as compared
with the brains of individuals diagnosed
with schizophrenia schizoaffective or
bipolar disorder so we were essentially
mapping the micro circuitry of the brain
which cells are communicating with which
cells with which chemicals and then in
what quantities of those chemicals so
there was a lot of meaning in my life
because I was performing this type of
research during the day but then in the
evenings and and on the weekends I
traveled as an advocate for Nami the
National Alliance on Mental Illness but
on the morning of December 10 1996 I
woke up to discover that I had a brain
disorder of my own a blood vessel
exploded in the left half of my brain
and in the course of four hours I
watched my brain completely deteriorate
in its ability to process all
information on the morning of the
hemorrhage I could not walk talk read
write or recall any of my life I
essentially became an infant in a
woman’s body if you’ve ever seen a human
brain
it’s obvious that the two hemispheres
are completely separate from one another
and I have brought for you a real human
brain
thank you sir so this is a real human
brain this is the front of the brain the
back of the brain with the spinal cord
hanging down and this is how it would be
positioned inside of my head and when
you look at the brain it’s obvious that
the two cerebral cortices are completely
separate from one another for those of
you who understand computers our right
hemisphere functions like a parallel
processor while our left hemisphere
functions like a serial processor the
two hemispheres do communicate with one
another through the corpus callosum
which is made up of some 300 million
axonal fibers but other than that the
two hemispheres are completely separate
because they process information
differently each of our hemisphere think
about different things they care about
different things and dare I say they
have very different personalities excuse
me thank you it’s been a joy
our right human hemisphere is all about
this present moment it’s all about right
here right now our right hemisphere it
thinks in pictures and it learns
kinesthetically through the movement of
our bodies information in the form of
energy streams in simultaneously through
all of our sensory systems and then it
explodes into this enormous collage of
what this present moment looks like what
this present moment smells like and
tastes like what it feels like and what
it sounds like I am an energy being
connected to the energy all around me
through the consciousness of my right
hemisphere we are energy beings
connected to one another through the
consciousness of our right hemispheres
as one human family and right here right
now we are brothers and sisters on this
planet here to make the world a better
place and in this moment we are perfect
we are whole and we are beautiful my
left hemisphere our left hemisphere is a
very different place our left hemisphere
thinks linearly and methodically our
left hemisphere is all about the past
and it’s all about the future our left
hemisphere is designed to take that
enormous collage of the present moment
and start picking out details details
and more details about those details it
then categorizes and organizes all that
information associates it with
everything in the past we’ve ever
learned and projects into the future all
of our possibilities and our left
hemisphere thinks in language it’s that
ongoing brain chatter that connects me
in my internal world to my external
world it’s that little voice that says
to me hey you got to remember to pick up
a Nana’s on your way home I need them in
the morning
it’s that calculating intelligence that
knows that
reminds me when I have to do my laundry
but perhaps most important it’s a little
voice that says to me I am I am and as
soon as my left hemisphere says to me I
am I become separate I become a single
solid individual separate from the
energy flow around me and separate from
you and this is a portion of my brain
that I lost on the morning of my stroke
on the morning of the stroke I woke up
to a pounding pain behind my left eye
and it was the kind of pain caustic pain
that you get when you bite into ice
cream and it just gripped me and then it
released me and then it just gripped me
and then it released me and it was very
unusual for me to ever experience any
kind of pain so I thought okay I’ll just
start my normal routine so I got up and
I jumped onto my cardia glider which is
a full body full exercise machine and
I’m jamming away on this thing and I’m
realizing that my hands look like
primitive claws grasping onto the bar
and I thought that’s very peculiar and I
looked down at my body and I thought
whoa I’m a weird-looking thing and it
was as though my consciousness had
shifted away from my normal perception
of reality where I’m the person on the
machine having the experience to some
esoteric space where I’m witnessing
myself having this experience there was
all very peculiar and my headache was
just getting worse so I get off the
machine and I’m walking across my living
room floor and I realized that
everything inside of my body has slowed
way down and every step is very rigid
and very deliberate there’s no fluidity
to my pace and there’s this constriction
in my area of perception so I’m just
focused on internal systems and I’m
standing in my bathroom getting ready to
step into the shower and I could
actually hear the dialogue inside of my
body I heard a little voice saying okay
you muscles you got a contract and you
muscles you relaxed and now I lost my
balance
propped up against the the wall and I
look down at my arm and I realized that
I can no longer define the boundaries of
my body I can’t define where I begin and
where I end because the atoms and the
molecules of my arm blended with the
atoms and molecules of the wall and all
I could detect was this energy energy
and I’m asking myself what is wrong with
me what is going on and in that moment
my brain shattered my left hemisphere
brain chatter went totally silent just
like someone took a remote control and
pushed the mute button total silence and
at first I was shocked to find myself
inside of a silent mind but then I was
immediately captivated by the
magnificence of the energy around me and
because I could no longer identify the
boundaries of my body I felt enormous
and expansive I felt at one with all the
energy that was and it was beautiful
there and then all of a sudden my left
hemisphere comes back online and it says
to me hey we had a problem we got a
problem we gotta get some help but I’m
going oh I got a problem I got a problem
so it’s like okay
okay I got a problem but then I
immediately drifted right back out into
the consciousness and I fictionally
refer to this space as lala land but it
was beautiful there imagine what it
would be like to be totally disconnected
from your brain chatter that connects
you to the external world so here I am
in this space and my job and any stress
related to mice my job it was gone and I
felt lighter in my body and imagine all
of the relationships in the external
world and any stressors related to any
of those they were gone and I felt this
sense of peacefulness and imagine what
it would feel like to lose 37 years of
emotional baggage
oh I felt euphoria euphoria it was
beautiful there and then again my left
hemisphere comes online and it says hey
you’ve got to pay attention we’ve got to
get help and I’m thinking I’ve got to
get help I gotta focus so I get out of
the shower and I mechanically dress and
I’m walking around my apartment and I’m
thinking I got to get to work I got to
get to work
can I Drive can I Drive and in that
moment my right arm went totally
paralyzed by my side did I realize oh my
gosh am I having a stroke
I’m having a stroke and then the next
thing my brain says to me is wow this is
so cool
this is so cool how many brain
scientists have the opportunity to study
their own brain from the inside out
and then it crosses my mind but I’m a
very busy woman
time for a strong
it’s like okay I can’t stop the stroke
from happening so I’ll do this for a
week or two and then I’ll get back to my
routine okay so I got a call help I got
a call work I couldn’t remember the
number at work so I remembered in my
office I had a business card with my
number on him so I go into my business
room I pull out a three inch stack of
business cards and I’m looking at the
card on top and even though I could see
clearly in my mind’s eye what my
business card looked like I couldn’t
tell if this was my card or not because
all I could see were pixels and the
pixels of the words blended with the
pixels of the background and the pixels
of the symbols and I just couldn’t tell
and then I would wait for what I call a
wave of clarity and in that moment I
would be able to reattach to normal
reality and I could tell that’s not the
card that’s not the card that’s not the
card it took me 45 minutes to get one
inch down inside of that stack of cards
in the mean time for 45 minutes the
hemorrhage is getting bigger in my left
hemisphere I do not understand numbers I
do not understand a telephone but it’s
the only plan I have so I take the foam
pad and I put it right here I take the
business card I put it right here and
I’m matching the shape of the squiggles
on the card to the shape of the
squiggles on the foam pad but then I
would drift back out into lala land and
not remember if when I come back and if
I’d already dialed those numbers so I
had to wield my paralyzed arm like a
stump and cover the numbers as I went
along and pushed them so that as I would
come back to normal reality I’d be able
to tell yes I’ve already dialed that
number eventually the whole number gets
dialed and I’m listening to the song and
my colleague picks up the phone and he
says to me whoa
and I think that myself oh my gosh he
sounds like a golden retriever
and so I say to him clear in my mind I
say to him this is Jill I need help
and what comes out of my voice is I
think oh my gosh I sound like a golden
retriever so I couldn’t know I didn’t
know that I couldn’t speak or understand
language until I tried so he recognizes
that I need help and he and he gets me
help and a little while later I’m I’m
riding in an ambulance from one hospital
across Boston to Mass General Hospital
and I curl up into a little fetal ball
and just like a balloon with the last
last bit of air of just just right out
of the balloon I just felt my energy
lift and just I felt my spirit surrender
and in that moment I knew that I was no
longer the choreographer of my life and
either the doctors rescue my body and
give me a second chance at life or this
was perhaps my moment of transition when
I woke later that afternoon I was
shocked to discover that I was still
alive when I felt my spirit surrender I
said goodbye to my life and my mind was
now suspended between two very opposite
planes of reality stimulation coming in
through my sensory systems felt like
pure pain light burned my brain like
wildfire and sounds were so loud and
chaotic that I could not pick a voice
out from the background noise and I just
wanted to escape because I could not
identify the position of my body in
space I felt enormous and expansive like
a genie just liberated from her bottle
and my spirit soared free like a great
whale gliding through a sea of silent
euphoria nirvana I found nirvana
I remember thinking there’s no way I
would ever be able to squeeze the
enormousness of myself back inside this
tiny little body but then I realized but
I’m still alive I’m still alive and I
have found nirvana and and if I have
found Nirvana and I’m still alive then
everyone who is alive can find nirvana
and I pictured a world filled with
beautiful peaceful compassionate loving
people who knew that they could come to
this space at any time and that they
could purposely choose to step to the
right of their left hemispheres and find
this peace and then I realized what a
tremendous gift this experience could be
what what a stroke of insight this could
be to how we live our lives and it
motivated me to recover two-and-a-half
weeks after the hemorrhage the surgeons
went in and they removed a blood clot
the size of a golf ball that was pushing
on my language centers Here I am with my
momma who’s a true angel in my life it
took me eight years to completely
recover so who are we we are the life
force power of the universe with manual
dexterity and two cognitive minds and we
have the power to choose moment by
moment who and how we want to be in the
world right here right now I can step
into the consciousness of my right
hemisphere where we are I am the
life-force power of the universe I am
the life-force power the 50 trillion
beautiful molecular geniuses that make
up my form and one with all that is or I
can choose to step into the
consciousness of my left hemisphere
where I become a single individual a
solid separate from the flow separate
from you
I am dr. Jill Bolte Taylor intellectual
neuroanatomist
these are the wee inside of me which
would you choose which do you choose and
when I believe 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 and I thought that was an idea
worth spreading
[Applause]