I highly recommend watching this TED presentation by Jill Bolte Taylor. Dr. Taylor is a neurologist who got the unique opportunity of studying a stroke from the inside out when she suffered one in her 40s. Possessing the detailed understanding of the brain that she did, Dr. Taylor was able to recognize the individual parts of her brain that were failing one by one as the stroke progressed.

She also speaks of the profound euphoria and interconnectedness that she felt during the moments when only her right brain was functioning, using language extremely similar to descriptions of acid trips and/or religious epiphanies. Gives me a lot to think about.

I initially watched this video several weeks ago, but Sam wrote about it in her blog and reminded me of it. I’ve noticed that people seem to take wildly different things from the lecture, and every blog post I’ve seen written about it has focused on a different aspect, but they are almost always laudatory, which in my mind is a testament to how fascinating a speech it really is.