Jill Bolte Taylor’s bestseller, My Stroke of Insight, is a polished literary work that can be easily read by a large audience. You don’t need to have the knowledge of a brain scientist to follow along; in fact, the second and third chapter has a summarized introduction to simple science of our bodies and our brain including hemispheric asymmetries. Readers are able to flow through Taylor’s exploration of new sensations from heavy reliance on her right hemisphere. This amalgamation of all little details of Jill’s life pre-stroke all the way through her eight year in recovery
In 1996 and at age 37, Taylor had a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere that had debilitating effects on her perception, movement, coordination, thought processes …show more content…
One of the most reliable tasks to be done to localize the problem is to examine the speech and language abilities of the victim. On the day of the stroke, Taylor kept mentally rehearsing, “This is Jill, I need help” but when she finally called her colleague for help, she could not decipher his speech (claiming it sounded like a golden retriever) and when she spoke, she was shocked to find she could not speak intelligibly (Taylor, 2008, p. 56). Certain language tasks are specifically correlated to areas in the brain, allowing stroke localization when brain imaging cannot be done or is …show more content…
Comparably, there was an example of Taylor trying to name the President of the United States post-stroke and it was an exhausting task for her to process the question; she had to focus on each sound, lip-read, search for word meanings, then apply it at a whole sentence level. She knew her “language with linear processing was out” and by the time she had the concept or picture of what a president was, her “brain could not get from “President” and “United States” to “Bill Clinton”” (Taylor, 2008, p.
In 1996 and at age 37, Taylor had a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere that had debilitating effects on her perception, movement, coordination, thought processes …show more content…
One of the most reliable tasks to be done to localize the problem is to examine the speech and language abilities of the victim. On the day of the stroke, Taylor kept mentally rehearsing, “This is Jill, I need help” but when she finally called her colleague for help, she could not decipher his speech (claiming it sounded like a golden retriever) and when she spoke, she was shocked to find she could not speak intelligibly (Taylor, 2008, p. 56). Certain language tasks are specifically correlated to areas in the brain, allowing stroke localization when brain imaging cannot be done or is …show more content…
Comparably, there was an example of Taylor trying to name the President of the United States post-stroke and it was an exhausting task for her to process the question; she had to focus on each sound, lip-read, search for word meanings, then apply it at a whole sentence level. She knew her “language with linear processing was out” and by the time she had the concept or picture of what a president was, her “brain could not get from “President” and “United States” to “Bill Clinton”” (Taylor, 2008, p.