Jill Bolte Taylor

30/2011

In February 2008, TED speaker, Jill Bolte Taylor gave a compelling speech about her experience of having a stroke. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained and published Neuroanatomist who dedicated her career to research into the severe mental illnesses. At the age of 37, Taylor suffered a stroke in the left hemisphere of the brain as a result of a bursting blood vessel. At the time that she had a stroke, she was researching about biological differences between healthy brains and brains of individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective or bipolar disorder. She explains the experience every Neuroanatomist would die to experience, according to Taylor, her body was paralyzed, she could not walk, talk, write or recall any memories of her past; "she was a baby in a women's body". In the start of the talk she talks about the anatomy of the brain and the functions of the left and right hemisphere of the brain. While speaking about the functions of the brain she actually brings out a real brain and explains what happens during a stroke. Taylor goes into detail about how a stroke occurs and provides the audience with vivid imagery of what was happening inside her body while the stroke was occurring. The voice of the left side of her brain echoed through her body Taylor explained as she nonchalantly moved her arms as if she was doing an interpretive dance. As her stroke was occurring and the left side of her brain was failing, Taylor recalls the "lala land" that she mentally slipped away to, and described it as the most beautiful thing ever. Taylor describes this place as everything you ever want and states it's a place where nirvana is found. At the seminar Taylor urged audience members to "step to the right of their left brains" in order to find nirvana. She discussed how as a society, we are too focused on the methodical and rule-based qualities of the left brain. She describes her "stroke of insi