Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor
My Story
I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who would grow up to be diagnosed with the brain disorder schizophrenia. As a child, I could tell that we were different, so I became captivated with understanding what is ‘normal’ and what is not. The subject of my postdoctoral research in the Harvard Department of Psychiatry, asked the question: ‘How does our brain create our perception of reality?’ I desperately wanted to understand at a biological/cellular level why it was that my brain was capable of connecting my everyday experience with reality such that I could make my dreams come true, but my brother’s brain could not make that connection and instead manifest hallucinations and delusions.
As irony would have it, in 1996 at the age of 37, a blood vessel exploded in the left half of my brain. This was a congenital arterio-venous malformation (AVM) that I was born with. On the morning of this rare form of stroke, I could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life. I became an infant in a woman’s body. It took eight years for me to completely rebuild my brain from the inside out, at which point I published my memoir, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey. This book spent 63 weeks on the NY Times bestseller list in 2008 and continues to be a top seller in the Amazon marketplace. It offers great insight for anyone who is taking care of a stroke survivor.
Later in 2008, I was invited to give a TED talk. At that time, there were barely a handful of TED talks online, and my claim to fame is that my talk, My Stroke of Insight, was the first talk to go viral on the internet.
And then there was the blessing of Oprah’s Soul Series and TV show…
…and the blessing of being chosen as one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential in the World.
Here I am with my beloved mama G.G. who reared me twice…
My Art: Brains Brains and more Brains…
Additionally, I create anatomically-correct stained glass brains as fine art. There are dozens of these beautiful brains on display all around the world!
Finally, I am an Indiana Limestone carver. Here in Bloomington, Indiana, where my home-on-land is located, we are surrounded by quarries.
This stone is magnificent for carving, and as an anatomist, I generally carve human figures … and, of course, the occasional brain!