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My stroke of insight | Jill Bolte Taylor | TED

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  • Recommended by 2 people, in Hacker News, across 3 different months.
  • Presented by Jill Bolte Taylor, brain scientist, as the video describes them
  • Debated among experts. Its central claim is contested, so look for the other side.

For anyone, no background needed. Education, not medical advice.

8.7M views18 years ago2 recommendations

Brain and nervesMental healthNeuroscienceNeurological conditions

Jill Bolte Taylor shares her personal experience of surviving a massive stroke and observing her brain functions shut down.

Visit TED.com to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more. Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion, speech, self-awareness -- shut down one by one. An astonishing story. The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. You're welcome to link to or embed these videos, forward them to others and share these ideas with people you know. Follow TED on Twitter: twitter.com/TEDTalks Like TED on Facebook: facebook.com/TED Subscribe to our channel: youtube.com/TED TED's videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy ted.com/about/our-organization/our-policies-terms/ted-talks-…. For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at media-requests.ted.com

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended for its powerful personal narrative of a stroke and its perspective on brain hemisphere function.

bradleyin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Human brain has more switches than all computers on Earth”

Thank you for mentioning Stephenson. I haven't read him other than Snow Crash, and I don't think I finished it. Googling Anathem brought me to this blog review of it: link which reminded me of this NIH neuro anatomist who studied her own stroke, including during her multi-year recovery. Her TED talk: link YouTube of same: link to this video She sees the right brain hemisphere as being our "consciousness" wetware connecting us to others. Parts of the video are esoteric, but it's fascinating to hear this first-person account from a brain researcher, especially of the morning of her stroke when her left hemishphere was damaged by a spontaneous brain hemorrhage. Edit: couple of typos
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dorfsmayin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Meditation and the Unconscious”

…come up, and some others are about deeper of sleep/reparation. I'm as rational as the next guy, but this type of mediation has affected me more than other forms. Please check this video 2 of a brain researcher describing having a stroke in her left brain, and has a lot of parallel with some descriptions of deep meditative state. 1: link 2: link to this video…
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dorfsmayin Hacker News • Recommends

On “Not everyone should meditate”

Yes, some forms of meditation, in particular "open awareness" is said to give more space to the right hemisphere. I highly recommend this video if you want to hear about what life is when the right hemisphere is in control, especially for people who have been doing non-dual practices (lots of parallel experiences IMO): link to this video
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virtualwhysin Hacker News • Mentions

On “The man who saw time stand still”

Surprised the article doesn't reference the stroke of enlightenment 0. Makes you wonder how much awakening (as described in linked video) is more accident than act of volition/determination (e.g. dedicated meditation/spiritual practice). Perhaps the latter sets the stage for the ultimate accident to occur. link to this video
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carapacein Hacker News • Mentions

On “We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems”

I would say that the first-order Cybernetics (as exemplified IMO in Ashby's book) is all about symbolic formalism for "circular loops in causality", and that Second-Order Cybernetics is a species of mysticism (I hasten to add that I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I'm a Mystic myself.) You could imagine a spectrum from logic to cybernetics to philosophy to mysticism. It's all fine, just I believe that it's important to be clear where on the spectrum you're working. If you want to build machines that do things use Cybernetics and feedback/control theory, if you want to grok reality and self eat a mushroom and read "Gödel, Escher, Bach" or Tao Te Ching. In re: "Laws of Form", yeah, he ide…
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