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After watching a TED talk by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor entitled, “Stroke of Insight”, I couldn’t resist the urge to write about psychology and brain science, once again. Dr. Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist and obviously knows a tremendous amount about how the brain works. Dr. Bolte Taylor’s talk focuses on how she experienced the process of a stroke as a blood vessel exploded in the left half of her brain. What makes this incredibly traumatic experience so interesting to learn about is the fact that Dr. Bolte Talyor knew exactly what was happening within her brain as the entire event unfolded. As she relives the experience, Dr. Bolte Taylor is able to describe how each hemisphere of her brain is functioning and why certain events take place because of the specialization of each hemisphere. I would do her presentation a terrible injustice if I tried to explain the entire event as she does because she does so from a very knowledgeable point of view. I can, however, relate the information she describes to a perception and interpretation of cerebral lateralization that is commonly held.
The concept of cerebral lateralization is most commonly simplified into the idea that a person is right-brain dominant or left-brain dominant. This over-simplified perception of the immensely complex processes of our brains has, naturally, been debunked by various studies. Maria Konnikova, author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, even discussed this issue with us scholars when we met with her last semester. As Konnikova explained to us, multiple studies have shown that people don’t function as right-brain dominant or left-brain dominant machines, but rather that the entire brain is stimulated as a variety of tasks are given to it. Cerebral lateralization and the concept of right-brain dominance and left-brain dominance, instead, refer to the compartmentalization that our brains use to process very specific information. Again, these concepts are too far beyond my scope to explain in depth, but I do find it fascinating to attempt to understand how our brains work and, further, how we interpret how our brains work.
To return to Dr. Bolte Taylor's TED talk, she leaves us with a very interesting perception of how our brains distinguish our experience from a focus on oneself to a focus on everything beyond oneself. Dr. Bolte Taylor explains that our right hemisphere focuses the present moment, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically. She describes the right side of our brain as the part that is focused on things beyond us and our connection to the energy that surrounds us. The left hemisphere, on the other hand, focuses on us; our past and our future. The left hemisphere thinks methodically and organizes information about the present moment into patterns that we can understand. Dr. Bolte Taylor then relates how she experienced the stroke to this brief description of the ways in which our left and right hemispheres process information and delegate tasks. She explains that during the stroke when the left side of her brain “shut off”, her right side dominated, she experienced a sense of euphoria and felt completely connected with her surrounding energy. Then she describes that when the left side of her brain “turned back on”, it warned her something was wrong with the body and began problem-solving to receive help. Dr. Bolte Taylor describes how she alternated between these altered states of consciousness until she was able to find a way to get help. The talk continues to describe her experience of having a stroke and what she learned about her brain because of it. Although the concepts that she presents are very difficult to fully understand and even harder to explain, it can be so enlightening and beneficial to begin to try understand how we think. Even if you cringe at the thought of learning about anything related to neuroanatomy, Dr. Bolte Taylor’s TED talk has a lot of insight to offer.
Here is Dr. Bolte Taylor's TED Talk:
Cathrine Mountain is a junior McConnell Scholar studying anthropology and political science.