Professor shares insight about brain after suffering stroke

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor spent more than 10 years training to become a brain scientist. But the four hours during which she suffered a massive stroke taught her far more than all her years in academia. \n"From the perspective of a neuroanatomist, the four hours of my stroke, losing my left mind, was extremely interesting," Taylor said at Bloomington Hospital's annual lecture on "compassionate care." \nTaylor is currently an adjunct professor at IU in the department of medical sciences, where she teaches neuroscience and gross anatomy to medical students. She is also the consulting neuroanatomist for the Midwest Proton Radiotherapy Institute, a breakthrough radiation center partnered with IU. \nShe recently published her book, "My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey," which should be available on mass Internet book sites by mid-December, she said.\nBefore holding her current positions at IU, Taylor conducted research on schizophrenic brains at Harvard Medical School. \n"I was on a very busy schedule. I was achievement-oriented. I was climbing the Harvard ladder. I was much more of the driven, left-hemisphere-dominated character," Taylor said, describing herself back then. \nBut on one December morning in 1996, she woke up with a pounding headache.\n"It was like the kind of headache you get after eating ice cream too fast, but it just kept pulsing right behind my eye," Taylor said.\nDuring the next four hours, Taylor experienced her mind's slow deterioration from the unique perspective of a curious brain scientist. \n"I felt as if I was as big as the universe. I could no longer define my physical boundaries; my brain chatter was silent. I felt at one with the whole universe. It was beautiful and good, and I liked it there," Taylor told the audience at Bloomington Hospital.\nAs the blood clot in her left hemisphere grew larger, Taylor began losing more and more of her functional capacity -- language, numbers and movement.\n"My right arm became paralyzed, and immediately, I thought, 'Oh my gosh. I'm having a stroke,'" she said.\nFour hours later, Taylor lie motionless in a hospital bed, bereft of all her cognitive functions.\nStrokes are the third leading cause of death in the United States, killing 51 people per 100,000, according to Centers for Disease Control National Center for Health Statistics.\nTaylor had a unique type of congenital defect in her brain called an Arterio-Venous Malformation, or AVM, that caused her stroke. Researchers believe each year between 2 percent and 4 percent of all AVMs -- about 300,000 Americans -- hemorrhage (or stroke) each year, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke's Web site, www.ninds.nih.gov.\nThe left hemisphere of the brain is the analyzer, concerned with the details. It thinks in terms of language and gives linearity to thoughts. It deals with the past, processes the present and projects into the future.\nWhen the left hemisphere dominates, the brain thinks in terms of "I am me. I am different from you. I am in competition with you," Taylor said. \nBut when the right hemisphere dominates, Taylor says, "We are all one." According to the right hemisphere, "this moment is a perfect moment." \nTo her, the right hemisphere emanates compassion.\n"Several of my friends have told me that post-stroke Jill is so much kinder than pre-stroke Jill," Taylor said in an interview. "I get a lot of that," she chuckled. \nTaylor attributes this to her newfound right brain.\nIn an interview, Taylor said the goal of sharing her story was to get people to realize the difference between the two hemispheres of the brain. She wants people to know they have two different personalities inside their brain and it is a personal choice that determines which one dominates.\nShe explained, for example, that getting cut off by another car on the road triggers a 90-second anger impulse. A 90-second surge of adrenaline runs through the brain, the well-known fight-or-flight response. After that, it is a conscious choice whether to hook into the left hemisphere, and have road rage, or to switch over to the right hemisphere, remain calm and allow that anger to subside. Taylor emphasized how people have a choice in how they live and act, and that ultimately depends on which side of their brain they're using.\n"What you pay attention to inside of your mind will grow," she said. "You are not your brain. Your brain is the tool you use to navigate your way through life"