| Jill Bolte Taylor | |
|---|---|
Jill Bolte Taylor speaking at TED on February 27, 2008
|
|
| Born | 1959 Louisville, Kentucky |
| Residence | Bloomington, Indiana |
| Alma mater | Terre Haute South Vigo High School, B.A. Indiana University, Ph.D. Indiana State University, Postdoctoral studies at Harvard Medical School (Depts of Psychiatry and Neuroscience) |
| Known for | Work in neuroanatomy |
Jill Bolte Taylor (born 1959 in Louisville, Kentucky) is a neuroanatomist who specializes in the postmortem investigation of the human brain. She is affiliated with the Indiana University School of Medicine and is the national spokesperson for the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center. Her own personal experience with a massive stroke, experienced in 1996 at age 37, and her subsequent eight-year recovery, has informed her work as a scientist and speaker. For this work, in May 2008 she was named to Time Magazine's 2008 Time 100 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.[1] "My Stroke of Insight" received the top "Books for a Better Life" Book Award in the Science category from the New York City Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society on February 23, 2009 in New York City.[2]
Contents |
On December 10, 1996, Taylor woke up to discover that she was experiencing a stroke. The cause proved to be bleeding from an abnormal congenital connection between an artery and a vein in her brain, an arteriovenous malformation (AVM). Three weeks later, on December 27, 1996, she underwent major brain surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) to remove a golf ball-sized clot that was placing pressure on the language centers in the left hemisphere of her brain.
Taylor's February 2008 TED Conference talk[3] about her memory of the stroke[4] became an Internet sensation, resulting in widespread attention and interest around the world.[5]
Following her experience with stroke, Taylor wrote the best-selling book My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey,[6] about her recovery from the stroke and the insights she has gained into the workings of her brain. Subsequently, Taylor appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show on October 21, 2008.[7] In her later commencement address at Duke University on May 10, 2009, Oprah Winfrey quoted Taylor's assertion that, "You are responsible for the energy that you bring" in encouraging the students to assume this same responsibility in their future lives.[8] Taylor was the first guest featured on Oprah's Soul Series[9] webcast on Oprah.com and Satellite radio show.
After 17 weeks on the New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction Bestseller list, My Stroke of Insight, whose paperback edition debuted at #4 on the paperback New York Times Bestseller list, is also available in large print, audio book, and kindle editions.
My Stroke of Insight is being transformed into a major feature film: "Sony Pictures Entertainment and Imagine Entertainment have teamed on My Stroke of Insight, brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor's memoir about her journey back from a debilitating stroke. Ron Howard has signed on to the direct the film, and he wants Jodie Foster as his star. But Foster isn't formally attached at this point. Semi Chellas is writing the script and Howard and his Imagine partner Brian Grazer are producing. The author, whose book was published last year by Plume, and Ellen Stiefler will be executive producers."[10]
Cedar Lake Ballet Company made a ballet about My Stroke of Insight called "Orbo Novo." "The piece's title, Orbo Novo, is drawn from a 1493 reference to North America by Spanish historian Pietro Martire d'Anghiera. But the "new world" that Cherkaoui is exploring is current theories about the brain, and the text that the 17 dancers speak during the first moments of the 75-minute work comes from My Stroke of Insight, neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor's uncanny recollection of her stroke. The choreography is based on the ramifications of a single resonant idea: the duality between rationality (the left brain) and instinctive, sensual responses (the right brain); between control and the lack of it; between balance and instability, solitude and society." [11] "Thus were the dancers speaking Taylor's words (“My spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through the sea of silent euphoria”), while they physically embodied brain waves and misfiring synapses, with a nod, perhaps, to the double helix: rubbery splayed limbs; über-arched backs; ever-rippling torsos." [12] “‘Orbo Novo’ is a humorous and insightful take on (Taylor’s) story,” said dancer Jubal Battisti. “It has a lot to do with the hemispheres of the brain switching between left and right and what that reveals.” [13]