By Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor
I chose to study the brain because I have a brother who has been diagnosed with the brain disorder schizophrenia. Since my brother is the closest thing that exists in the universe to me at a biological level, I wanted to understand why it was that I could take my dreams and connect them to a common reality, and then make my dreams come true. What was it about my brother's brain, with his hallucinations and delusions, which rendered him incapable of connecting his mind to a shared and common reality?
Once I received my Ph.D. in Life Sciences at Indiana State University, I moved to the Boston area where I began teaching and performing research at Harvard Medical School. I spent two years in the Harvard Department of Neuroscience and then moved on to the Department of Psychiatry, where I specialized in the postmortem (after death) investigation of the brain as it relates to schizophrenia, schizoaffective, and bipolar disorders. In the lab we were trying to identify the structural differences between the brains of individuals who exhibited the symptoms of hallucination and delusion, and those who exhibited mania and depression, from those who would be classified as normal control.
During this time of my life, I was serving on the Board of Directors for NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). There was a long term shortage of brain tissue donated for research into the severe mental illnesses, and I used my position on the national NAMI board to educate our membership that if we wanted more research into the severe mental illnesses, then we would have to organize ourselves and sign up as brain donors.
There was a lot of meaning in my life during this time because I was doing something that could help people like my brother. But on the morning of December 10, 1996, I woke up to discover that I had a brain disorder of my own. I had been born with a malformation in the blood vessels in the left hemisphere of my brain (AVM, arteriovenous malformation). At the age of 37, this tangle of blood vessels exploded and over the course of four hours, I watched my mind completely deteriorate in its ability to process information. On the afternoon of this rare form of stroke, I could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life.
When you look at a human brain, it is obvious that the right and left hemispheres are completely separate from one another. The outer convolutions of the brain make up the cerebral cortex, and this is the portion of our brain where we think and feel. Although the right and left hemispheres process similar types of information, they do it differently,resulting in individually distinct perceptions of reality.
The right hemisphere thinks in pictures and is all about the present moment. Your right hemisphere not only controls the left half of your body, but it receives sensory information from it. The opposite is true for the left hemisphere, which thinks in language, and is our ability to relate information to the past and to project ideas into the future. Our left hemisphere controls the movement of the right half of our body and receives sensory information from it.
Our two cerebral hemispheres communicate with one another through the corpus callosum so that the right hemisphere knows what is going on in the left hemisphere and vice versa. These two hemispheres then work together to create for us a single seamless perception of the world, and when they are working like they are supposed to, they work just great.
When the AVM exploded in the left hemisphere of my brain, I watched my left hemisphere skills break down in their ability to process information. In most of us, regardless of whether we are right or left handed, the cells in our brain that create and understand language reside in our left hemisphere. A word is a sound on which we place a meaning. The word "dog" is a sound, and then our brain places a meaning on that sound. When we flash a picture of a dog in our mind—that is our right hemisphere thinking in pictures. When we think of a specific dog we know or a specific breed of dog, that is our left hemisphere.
Our language center plays several roles in our lives. For one, it is that ongoing brain chatter that is never quiet. Second, there is a small group of those cells that make up my ego center. These are the cells that say "I am" and as soon as my brain says to me "I am," then I have an existence as an individual. Related to that portion of my brain are all the files that relate to me as an individual—my name, my address, my likes and dislikes, etc. For example, I know who I am because the cells in my brain that know who I am remind me of those details. In addition, there is a group of cells that I call the story-teller, and this group of cells is designed to take a few bits of information and start making up the "what if" stories. This very important group of cells does this in order to prepare me for what might be coming. If I have already thought of every possibility, then when something happens, I have already considered that as an option. We get really sidetracked when things happen that we never considered.
Another group of cells related to our left hemisphere language centers are what I call the peanut gallery. This is that tiny little group of cells that is not totally committed to my joy. It is that little critical voice that has the potential to be mean, not by merely being critical of myself, but critical of others.
On the morning of the stroke, I had the privilege of watching my brain undergo a systematic deterioration of the abilities in my left hemisphere. Through the eyes of a curious scientist, I witnessed the shutting down of my left mind and as it became more and more disabled, it released its inhibition of my right hemisphere, which then began to flourish. As a result, the brain chatter in my left hemisphere became completely silent and I shifted into a "present moment" consciousness whereby I had no recollection of the details of my previous life.
I was very fortunate that at no time during the morning of the stroke did I move into a fearful or panic mode. Perhaps it was because I was fascinated by what was going on in my brain through the eyes of a scientist and I never really entertained the idea that I would not be able to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life. It took eight years for me to completely recover.
During the process of recovery, I learned some amazing things about my brain that I believe to be true for all of us. First, I learned that I really am completely dependent on the cells in my brain for everything. For example, I can track a moving target as it passes through space because I have cells that perform that function. As soon as those cells are injured, killed or compromised in any way, I would lose that ability.
I also learned that I have thinking circuitry and that every thought I think is the product of cells in my brain. In addition, I have emotional circuitry that, when stimulated, allow me to experience emotion. I also learned that I can think a thought that stimulates my emotional circuitry, which then runs a physiological response circuit in my brain. For example, I can think a thought that stimulates my anger circuit which then triggers a physical response whereby my breath becomes shorter, my shoulder girdle muscles elevate my shoulders, I clamp my jaw and the muscles in my forehead become tense and I frown. What I learned during my process of recovery, was that I had the ability to pick and choose which of these circuits I wanted to run, giving me much more say over what is going on in my brain than I was ever taught. And the beauty of this is that it is true for everyone.
The next time you think a thought that triggers your anger, sadness or even joyful circuitry, I encourage you to pay attention to your body and its automatic response. You can teach yourself to pay attention to your thoughts and learn to stop thinking thoughts that trigger your emotional circuitry unconsciously. It takes less than 90 seconds for you to think a thought that will stimulate an emotional circuit that will then run a physiological response. If you stay angry or sad or happy it may be because you have chosen either consciously or unconsciously to rethink the thoughts that restimulated that response.
My experience with stroke has been a tremendous gift to my life. It has given me new insights into how our brains work. My stroke of insight is that peace is just a thought away. I wish you all the very best in your journey.
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist who experienced a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain in 1996. On the afternoon of this rare form of stroke (AVM), she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. It took eight years for Dr. Jill to completely recover all of her functions and thinking ability. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey (published in 2008 by Viking Penguin) and was chosen as one of TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2008. In addition, Dr. Jill was the premiere guest on Oprah's Soul Series webcast and her interview with Oprah and Dr. Oz on the Oprah Winfrey Show was aired on Tuesday, October 21, 2008.
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