07.28.08
I apologize again for not keeping up on my one TED talk a week policy but life has been a little hectic lately. I was just thumbing through some of the talks the other day and discovered this talk by Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor. Her story is unique in that she actually studies the human brain and suffered a stroke. She remembers every bit of the experience in vivid detail and tried her hardest to do so because she saw it as a once in a lifetime opportunity, if she survived, to share her first person insight with the rest of the world. That is exactly what she does in this talk. It has to be one of the most moving talks on the entire TED website and it really stuck with me. I have had someone in my family go through a similar experience that it took them a long time to recover from and it may be because of that I found Taylor’s talk so touching. It takes a massive amount of courage to share something like that with so many people and her story is really amazing.
Here is the background about the talk copied from the TED website:
“One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor’s brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness …
Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the “Singin’ Scientist.”
‘How many brain scientists have been able to study the brain from the inside out? I’ve gotten as much out of this experience of losing my left mind as I have in my entire academic career.’
Jill Bolte Taylor”
written by Christopher | tags: Jill Bolte Taylor, Neuroanatomy, Science, Stroke
