New Zealand Rehabilitation Association, Inc.

Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuroanatomist from the United States, whose perspective on brain function and neuropathology changed after she suffered a haemorrhagic stroke in 1996.  She reported that she took eight years to fully rehabilitate from this stroke.  Since that time Jill has written a book about her experiences, “My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey”, and has received numerous accolades at an international level.

The link below is to a recording of a 20 minute presentation Dr Taylor gave for “TED: Ideas Worth Spreading”.  In it she provides insights into what the lived experience of a stroke is like (in this case a left-sided haemorrhagic stroke), but really this presentation is about the spiritual (not to be confused with religious) growth she gained from her illness and recovery.  Jill provides is a fascinatingly lucid description of the otherwise confusing and disorientating phenomena of acute brain injury.  One caveat here: Broadband is strongly recommended to download this presentation.

To view Jill Bolte Taylor’s presentation, click here.

Dr Taylor also happened to feature recently in an interview on Radio New Zealand on Saturday, 5 July, 2008.  This interview can be downloaded by clicking here.  

The only footnote I would add to Dr Taylor’s insightful presentation is some level of scepticism regarding how significant ‘left-brain’ and ‘right-brain’ activity is for personality types or cognition styles.  There has been a tendency in popular culture to over-emphasise the differences between so-called ‘right-brain thinkers’ versus ‘left-brain thinkers’.  Right-brainers are supposed to be intuitive, holistic and subjective.  Left-brainers are supposed to be logical, analytical and objective.  Making distinctions between right-brainers and left-brainers and coming up with strategies to make your ‘two brains’ think together happens to have been a very successful formula selling books and educational workshops.  Probably the most lucrative version of this has been the ‘Brain Gym’ programme, which has been successfully sold to vast numbers of schools all around the world despite significant concerns being raised regarding the lack research evidence underpinning the claims associated with it.  (For an informative critique of the ‘Brain Gym’ programme visit the Bad Science website.) Skepticism regarding one particularly popular 'test' for left-brain or right-brain thinking can be found by clicking here.

I agree that neurons in similar areas of the brain do often share similar roles in cognition and information processing but there is a risk here of over-simplifying the tremendously complex nature of brain function.  The fact that language function can be located in the left side of most people’s brain is often given as evidence of the striking difference between left brain and right brain function.  This ‘fact’ however ignores the evidence that approximately 22% of left-handed or ambidextrous people have an atypical location for their language function (either in their right side or spread across both lobes).  In other words, extrapolating from this sort of high-level neuroanatomy to make assertions about personality types or ways of thinking seems to me like a massive over-generalisation.

Incidentally, the “TED: Ideas Worth Spreading” website itself is worth a browse.  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and represents an organisation which holds one conference each year to bring together fascinating and challenging thinkers from different fields from all around the world.  The TED website makes the best talks and performance from these conferences available to the public for free.  After seeing Tony Robbins (Mr Unleash-The-Power-Within!)  featured as one of the top ten most popular presentations on this website, I have to admit I did wonder initially what this ‘free’ website was trying to sell.  But examining the the website more closely, it does appear the TED people have a genuine interest in sharing ideas rather than in making money.  TED is owned by The Sapling Foundation, a private not-for-profit organisation. The videos featured on the website are released under a Creative Commons license, so can be freely shared and reposted. Finally none of the ten ways listed to help TED in it mission to “giving millions of knowledge-seekers around the globe direct access to the world's greatest thinkers and teachers” involve you sending any money to anyone.  So this website gets two thumbs up from me. 

…Now all we need are a few more presentations about disability and rehabilitation on it.

My thanks to Katie Holloway and Christine Marra from Waikato DHB for bringing this talk by Jill Bolte Taylor to my attention.