Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of Insight

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.

I’m becoming more and more fascinated with the brain. Growing-up
“outer space” always seemed to be touted as the “new frontier”, but that concept has faded over the years. It seems, to me at least, that now the brain has filled this void. I recently purchased a few books about the brain, but haven’t gotten around to reading them. There are a lot of books being published about the brain recently, a lot related to happiness. The way I see it though, humans have created “machines” that are millions of times strong and smarter than humans, but they lack the humanity element that makes humans human. More insight and understanding of brain might help bring this added dimension to “machines”.

Also, my mother suffered brain damage during a car accident years back, and while she has since died, I always wondered how her perception of reality differed. It clearly did, but she never really talked about it. I'm not even sure she knew, but the video provides some evidence that she must have, except her injury was on the right side of the brain, not the left side, so it most likely wasn't the same experience described in the video.