Jill Bolte Taylor (born May 15, 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 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. "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.

Stroke of Insight

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 about her memory of the stroke became an Internet sensation, resulting in widespread attention and interest around the world.

Following her experience with stroke, Taylor wrote the best-selling book My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey, 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. 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. Taylor was the first guest featured on Oprah's Soul Series 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 translated and published in over 30 countries.

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.

Criticism

Some commentators, while often acknowledging the quality of the TED talk, have expressed criticism on its scientific content. According to Dr Vaughan Bell, on a Mind Hacks blog post: "You can almost hear the sound of a thousand cognitive scientists gritting their teeth as she describes the supposed functions of each cerebral hemisphere and probably the sound of some of them fainting when she describes the "deep inner peace circuitry" of the right hemisphere."

Source: wikipedia.org