An Amazing Story of One Person’s Study of the Mind
I was reading boing! boing! this morning and came across this post about Jill Bolte Taylor - a neuroanatomist that one morning realized that she was having a stroke, and how she studied the stroke from the inside out. It is probably the most uplifting 20 minutes I've spent in a year. Truly incredible.
as quoted on boing! boing!:
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.
However, in my opinion that's not the most fascinating part of the story. No, the most interesting part of the story is how she feels about the experience. How she is changed - not physically, but emotionally and mentally, to see things not from where she has always been, but from where she allowed herself to sit - even if just for a few days.
We are all born to that narrow slice of life that we know. For some it's wider than for others, but still, it's pretty narrow for the vast majority of us all. Here's a person that had it as narrow as any have her eyes opened up to what could be. And how she feels now about it.