Friday, March 28, 2008

Stroke of Insight

Imagine for a moment that you're a neuroscientist. Now imagine that you've had a stroke. Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

2 comments:

Romulus Crowe said...

A fascinating account and one I can at least partly sympathise with - after all, I might not know whether my own studies are correct until I get there myself, and then it'll be too late to publish it.

I'm left-hemisphere biased most of the time, but that multi-variable processing ability on the right is often useful. Never managed to go 'all right', but if I ever do I hope it'll be in a somewhat less drastic way!

Brunhilda said...

Crazy. This lady is giving a talk in our county library tonight. I saw a flier and remembered this post.