MYSTORY AND OUR BRAIN

I grew up to study the brain because I had a brother 18 months older than I who would eventually be diagnosed with the brain disorder schizophrenia. As young siblings, my brother and I were virtually inseparable, but at an early age, I realized that he and I were very different from one another in how we experienced reality. On a routine basis, we would have the exact same experience but walk away with very different interpretations of what had just happened. He might think our mother was angry at us based on the tone of her voice, for example, while I was quite sure she was petrified that we were going to be hurt. Because of this I became fascinated with trying to understand what was “normal” because it was clear to me that one of us was atypical. As far as I could tell, he was oblivious to our different perceptions and interpretations.

For my own survival and sanity, I started paying very close attention to what I could learn from others based on their body and facial languages. I became fascinated with anatomy, and at Indiana University I pursued undergraduate degrees in physiological psychology and human biology. After spending a couple of years as a lab tech in a neuroanatomy lab, I skipped the master’s degree program and went straight for a Ph.D. in life sciences at Indiana State University.

Although my research focus was in neuroanatomy through the Indiana University School of Medicine, I found my true joy in the gross anatomy lab, where we dissected human cadavers. For me there is truly nothing more magnificent than the human body, so “gross” lab was a spectacular treat. It was during this doctoral program that my brother, at the age of 31, was officially diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia. As you might imagine, a part of me felt relieved to learn that he was the one diagnosed as “not normal,” as that meant that I was most likely the neurotypical one.

After I received my doctorate in Indiana, I scooted off to Boston, where I initially spent two years in the Harvard Department of Neuroscience. From there, I spent four years in the Harvard Department of Psychiatry, working with the amazing “Queen of Schizophrenia,” Dr. Francine Benes. My

research and professional life truly began to blossom. I adored being a lab rat and felt an awe-inspired camaraderie with the beautiful cells I examined through the microscope.

I was fascinated with how our brains create our perception of reality. I studied the postmortem brain cells and circuitry of people who were diagnosed as normal-control—meaning they would be used as the control group in the experiments I was designing—and then compared that tissue with the brains of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective, or bipolar disorder. My weekdays were spent performing jaw-dropping innovative research, which ultimately resulted in journal articles with titles like “Differential Distribution of Tyrosine Hydroxylase Fibers on Small and Large Neurons in Layer II of Anterior Cingulate Cortex of Schizophrenic Brain” and “Colocalization of Glutamate Decarboxylase, Tyrosine Hydroxylase and Serotonin Immunoreactivity in Rat Medial Prefrontal Cortex.” This last one became a classic, as it was the first article ever to be published by the first online-only scientific journal, Neuroscience-Net .

On the weekends, with guitar in tow, I took a different tack. I traveled as the “Singin’ Scientist” for the Harvard Brain Bank, educating families with mental illness about the shortage of brain tissue for research and the value of brain donation. At the age of 36, I found myself the youngest person to ever be elected to the national board of directors of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. This wonderful organization has a membership of over 100,000 families whose loved ones have been diagnosed with severe mental illness. NAMI is a really important national, state, and local resource for families in need (NAMI.org). Between the research and advocating for the mentally ill at the national level, my life had terrific purpose. I was helping people like my brother while at the same time keeping my finger on the pulse of research and public policy.

I was in the prime of my life, strong and athletic, and climbing the Harvard ladder. I was fulfilling my dreams as a successful neuroscientist in the world of schizophrenia and finding meaning as a national-level advocate. Then, on the morning of December 10, 1996, at the age of 37, I woke up to a pounding pain behind my left eye.

MY STROKE AND INSIGHT

As it turned out, I was born with a congenital neurological brain disorder that I didn’t know was there until it became a problem. An arteriovenous malformation (AVM) exploded in the left hemisphere of my brain, and over the course of four hours I watched my brain functions shut down one by one. On the afternoon of the stroke I could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of my life. In effect, I had become an infant in a woman’s body.

As you might imagine, it was fascinating for me to watch my brain systematically break down, through the eyes of a neuroscientist. The damage to the left hemisphere of my brain was so traumatic that I predictably lost the ability to speak and understand language. In addition, the chattering “monkey mind” of my left brain went silent. With that internal dialogue circuitry shut off, I sat in the center of a completely silent brain for five full weeks. I even lost that little voice of my left-brain egoself that could say, “I am an individual, separate from the whole. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.” In the absence of my chatty and linear-thinking left brain, I stepped into the awe-inspiring experiential sensations of the present moment, and it was beautiful there.

Compounding my deficiencies of language and individuality, the injury to my left parietal lobe, which processes sensory information from the outside world, made it impossible for me to identify the boundaries of where my physical body began and where it ended. As a result my perception of myself became altered. Instead of a physical being, I experienced myself to be an energy ball that was as big as the universe. Shifted into this consciousness of my right brain, I perceived the essence of myself as enormous and expansive, and my spirit soared free, like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria.

Emotionally I went from feeling the normal emotions I had experienced in my pre-stroke life to feeling nothing except a sense of peaceful bliss. I know this sounds like an amazing blessing, and it certainly was, but being able to feel a range of emotions makes life much more diverse and interesting. Physically, within those same four hours on the morning of the stroke, I went from being able to swim a mile in 30 minutes to lying

sprawled on a hospital gurney with my conscious mind trapped inside a motionless body that felt like a ton of lead.

It was eight years before my body completely recovered and I could slalom water-ski again. During that time I regained the emotional circuits of resentment, guilt, and embarrassment, as well as all of the other more subtle feelings and emotions that make life alluring. Our emotions, even the negative ones, truly enrich our perception of experience and make life nuanced and more remarkable. I wrote about this stroke, recovery, and lessons learned about neuroplasticity and the ability of the brain to recover

. in my memoir, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

Since then I have begun to explore even more deeply the most valuable insight I gained from this sojourn into the depths of my brain: the realization that we have the power to turn our emotional circuitry on and off by choice. In fact, the same principle underlying our bodies’ neurological reflexes, like the kick our knee will give when our patella tendon is tapped with a reflex hammer, remains in play when an emotional circuit is triggered and we reflexively respond with fear, anger, or hostility.

Once the circuit is stimulated and we have triggered an emotional response, it takes less than 90 seconds for the chemistry of that emotion to flood through us and then flush completely out of our bloodstream. Of course, we can either consciously or unconsciously choose to rethink the thought that triggered the emotional circuit to run and stay hurt, angry, sad, or whatever for longer than 90 seconds. But in that case what we are doing at a neurological level is restimulating the emotional circuit so it will run over and over again. If there is no repeated trigger, the emotional circuit will run its course and stop after the 90 seconds that it takes for the chemistry to neutralize. I call this the 90 Second Rule and will share examples in the chapters ahead.

THE “WE” INSIDE OF ME

The TED conference where I presented was dedicated to “The Big Questions,” and for the opening session we speakers were directed to address the theme “Who Are We?” I chose to approach this by talking about the “We” inside each of our brains, the “We” of our left and right brain hemispheres. The roster of speakers included some world-famous scientists, including the Canadian anthropologist Wade Davis and Louise Leakey, a National Geographic paleontologist. Then there was me, a Harvard-trained girl from Indiana who had survived, and recovered from, a massive stroke. Needless to say, I was the least known speaker in the lineup.

On the day before the opening of the conference, I was onstage giving a practice run for the TED staff and crew. They were performing sound and lighting checks and working through logistics, and because I had brought along a preserved human brain, there were some special considerations. After delivering the first six minutes of my presentation during that practice run, I paused and was ready to stop, but Chris Anderson, the curator of TED, encouraged me to proceed. His mother had experienced a stroke, so he was particularly interested in my topic.

For the next segment, I took the audience on a reenacted journey into the moment-by-moment breakdown of my mind as it had occurred on the morning of the stroke. I shared what it felt like to waffle between the consciousnesses of my left and right hemispheres. It was a dramatic performance in which my left hemisphere was desperate to orchestrate my rescue, countered by the blissful euphoria of my right hemisphere.

I described how I struggled to stay connected to my functional left brain and managed to make a phone call for help, even though I had no recognizable language. When I found myself curled up in a fetal ball in an ambulance, I felt my spirit surrender, and in that release I was certain I was in my moment of transition. At that point in the presentation, to my surprise, an uncanny silence fell over the TED practice room, and I realized that the staff and crew had stopped what they were doing to listen.

Quote: “When I awoke later that afternoon, I was shocked to discover that I was still alive. When I felt my spirit surrender, I had said goodbye to

my life. Then I realized, but I’m still alive, and I have found Nirvana, and if I have found Nirvana and I’m still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana. I pictured a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace. And then I realized what a tremendous gift this experience could be, what a stroke of insight this could be for how we live our lives. And it motivated me to recover.”

The room was not silent anymore. When I finished, I heard sniffles and even weeping. Chris immediately rearranged the schedule, shifting my talk to the last spot of the afternoon. I might be an unknown girl from Indiana, but he knew that this presentation was something special and that his attendees would probably be profoundly moved. It turned out he was right.

Thanks to the response of the staff and crew, I slept well that night and woke up fresh before taking the TED center stage. I ended my talk in this way, answering the “big question” with this reminder:

Who Are We?

We are the life-force power of the universe with manual dexterityand two cognitive minds. We have the power to choose, moment bymoment, who and how we want to be in the world.

Right here, right now, I can step into the consciousness of my righthemisphere, where we are, I am, the life-force power of the universe. Iam the life-force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniusesthat make up my form, at One with all that is.

Or, I can choose to step into the consciousness of my lefthemisphere, where I become a single individual, a solid, separate fromthe flow, and separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor: intellectual,neuroanatomist.

These are the “We” inside of me.Which would you choose? Which do you choose . . . and when?I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep innerpeace circuitry of our right hemisphere, the more peace we will projectinto the world and the more peaceful our planet will be.

And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

As I have already mentioned, the public’s response to that TED talk continues to be profound. It is clear that we, as a collective, are searching for a specific set of directions about how we can choose the peaceful mindset of our right hemisphere to counterbalance the chaos in our world. Many of us are in search of a paradigm shift for how we can embrace our deep inner peace, regardless of our situation.

The most frequently asked question I receive is “How do I quiet the brain chatter in my left brain?” Clearly, many people want to stop their habits of self-judgment and criticism. It is also common for me to hear “I have been practicing meditation for years and have only experienced that feeling of euphoria that you describe a couple of times. What can I do differently to get there? Do you meditate, and if so, what form? Can you still find that sense of euphoria, and if so, what can I do to get there?” Then there is this one: “What drugs might I take to help me feel that euphoria you got from the stroke? Psychedelics? If so, which ones?” (As important as that question is, especially in light of the recent research into the use of ecstasy for posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD], that field is beyond my knowledge base.)

By choosing to meditate, pray, or practice mindfulness exercises, we can certainly quiet the chatter and free ourselves from the prison of our own minds. But please be clear: This book is not about any of those subjects. It is about “the power of the We inside of me.” I believe that the better we understand the various groups of cells inside of our brain, how they are organized, and what it feels like to run each of those different cellular circuits, the more power we have to purposefully choose which of those neural networks we want to run. By doing so we ultimately gain the power to choose who and how we want to be in the world each and every moment, regardless of what external circumstances we find ourselves in.

I will draw on two different disciplines to explain this idea in the chapters ahead. The science of neuroanatomy involves the study of the structure of the brain. The science of psychology involves the study of the mind and our mental processes. What makes this book so unique and exciting is that the psychology I present here is specifically correlated to the underlying brain

anatomy and what we know about the function of those specific groups of cells. When you open yourself to this material, you will gain amazing insights into both the conscious and unconscious realms of your left and right hemispheres. By doing so you will become much more aware of your power to choose who and how you want to be, because you will know what your options are at both a psychological and biological level.

This journey we will take into your brain is reminiscent of Joseph Campbell’s classic monomyth that describes the steps a hero must take to fulfill his Hero’s Journey. In the language of the brain, the hero must step out of his own ego-based left-brain consciousness into the realm of his right brain’s unconsciousness. At this point the hero feels connected to all that is, and is enveloped by a sense of deep inner peace. As you gain mastery of the Four Characters in your brain, whom you are about to meet, you will embark upon your own Hero’s Journey into the circuitry of your unconscious brain and realize that peace really is just a thought away. It is always right there and always available for you to embody.

When the cells in my left hemisphere experienced trauma and shut down, I did not just lose cells and skill sets. I lost parts of my personality, including the highly motivated part that was smart, disciplined, punctual, detail based, methodical, and well organized and that knew the details of my life. That part of me was a character that disappeared with the stroke and was no longer available, at least until those cells recovered and that circuitry came back online. I also lost the part of my personality that had known all of the challenges, emotions, and pain from my past. Without that character available, all I could experience was the peaceful euphoria of the present moment.

It took eight years for me to rebuild all of those wounded circuits, and then resurrect and recover those two left-brain characters that had gone offline. I learned the hard way that we each have four distinctive groups of cells, divided between our two brain hemispheres, that generate four consistent and predictable personalities. Neuroanatomically these four groups of cells make up the left and right thinking centers of our higher cerebral cortex, as well as our left and right emotional centers of our lower limbic system. Collectively, I call these personalities the Four Characters. Getting to know them inside of your brain is a ticket to freedom.

I realize that the material in this book may require a theoretical shift in how you think about your brain anatomy. For at least 50 years, we have

been trained as a society to believe that our left hemisphere is our “rational thinking” brain, while our right hemisphere is our “emotional” brain. Actually, from a neuroanatomical perspective, although it is true that our left thinking tissue is the home of our conscious, rational mind (which I will refer to as Character 1), both our left and right brain hemispheres share the cells of our emotional limbic system equally (Characters 2 and 3). Character 4 occupies the higher cortical thinking tissue of our right brain.

HOW WE THINK AND FEEL

At any moment in time, there are pretty much only three things going on in our brain. We think thoughts, we feel emotions, and we run physiological responses to what we are thinking and feeling. Each of these activities is completely dependent on the health and well-being of the cells that are performing those functions.

We experience emotions via the cells of our limbic system, and these cells are evenly divided between our two hemispheres. The major structures of the limbic system are mirrored in each hemisphere such that we have two amygdalae, two hippocampi, and two anterior cingulate gyri, among others. This means we have two separate modules for emotional processing (Characters 2 and 3). When information streams in through our sensory systems, it first stops off at our amygdalae, which are there to ask the question, “Am I safe?” We feel safe in the world when enough of the sensory stimulation coming in feels familiar.

When something does not feel familiar, however, our amygdalae tend to label that unfamiliar thing as dangerous, and they respond by triggering our fight-flight-or-play-dead fear response. If it has been your natural tendency to fight, you probably rage, get big and loud, go on the attack or try to shoo the thing away. If it is your style to run like the wind or play dead, then that response may be your best choice.

When our amygdalae are triggered and we feel fear, we are not able to run the learning and memory circuitry of our hippocampi. Until we push the pause button and take a moment to calm down and feel safe again, we will not be able to think clearly. This is why anyone who is freaking out with test anxiety tends to perform poorly, regardless of how well prepared they are. When our limbic anxiety circuit is triggered, we are neuroanatomically cut off from accessing our higher cortical thinking centers, which is where our learned knowledge is stored.

Understanding the anatomy of the brain is always insightful when it comes to our experience and behavior. If we live with the basic belief that there is only one group of cells inside of our brain that processes our emotions, our experience of mixed emotions can be very confusing. At a neuroanatomical level, when we experience conflicting feelings it is because we have two emotional groups of cells that are completely separate from one another in that they do not share any cell bodies.

Equally important, these two emotional modules of cells process incoming information in predictably different ways. Providing we understand that our left brain processes information linearly and in sequence, we will see in detail how our left-brain emotional module is designed to bring in information about the present moment and then compare that to any emotional experience we have had in the past. As a result, our left-brain emotional Character 2 is programmed to protect us from anything that has a history of hurting us. Consequently, our Character 2 is primed to say “No” and push things away.

Our right-brain emotional Character 3 is exactly the opposite in that it processes present-moment experiences in the present moment. Therefore our emotional Character 3 always exists in the here and now and has no recollection of the past. Instead of pushing things away, our Character 3 moves enthusiastically toward any experience that remotely smells like an enticing and juicy adrenaline rush.

In the mammalian nervous system, a new species is often created by adding new brain cells on top of a well-integrated preexisting cellular matrix. When this happens, the new tissue is designed to refine and evolve the abilities of the tissue below. In the case of the human brain, although we share the cells of our deeper emotional limbic tissue with other mammals, such as dogs and monkeys, what distinguishes our human brain as unique are the newly added-on higher cortical cells of our two thinking brains.

When information from the external world streams in through our sensory systems, it is processed first by the cells of our limbic emotional cells before it is refined by our higher thinking centers. So, from a purely biological perspective, we humans are feeling creatures who think, rather than thinking creatures who feel. Neuroanatomically you and I are programmed to feel our emotions, and any attempt we may make to bypass or ignore what we are feeling may have the power to derail our mental health at this most fundamental level.

From an evolutionary standpoint, our human brain exists as a truly amazing neurological accomplishment, but it is critical to remember that we are far from being a finished product. Instead humanity exists in an ongoing state of evolution: First, we are actively integrating the newly added-on tissue of our left thinking brain (Character 1) with the tissue of the

underlying left emotional brain (Character 2). Second, we are integrating the newly added-on tissue of our right thinking brain (Character 4) with the underlying tissue of our right emotional brain (Character 3). Third, we are connecting the left emotional brain tissue (Character 2) with the right emotional brain tissue (Character 3). And finally, we are integrating the left thinking brain tissue (Character 1) with the right thinking brain tissue (Character 4). When we accomplish this we will evolve into whole-brain living.

Although our human brain is an evolving masterpiece in process, you don’t have to look far to see how the differences between what our left and right hemispheres value (which we will explore in detail in Chapter 3) are playing out in our lives and in society. Besides the most obvious social unrest imparted by our bipartisan political hostilities, statistically speaking, one in five adults in the U.S. will be diagnosed with a severe mental illness at some point in their life. Choosing to advance our own evolution as a species will help us find peace individually, communally, and ultimately globally.

As we move through this material, I implore you to open your heart and mind and be completely honest with yourself about your own individual strengths and weaknesses. As long as we live in a society that rewards us for what we do, rather than for who we are, we will feel undervalued and unfulfilled. For many of us, our goal has been to “get rid of” or “fix” the most unruly, unattractive, or vulnerable parts of ourselves. But when we choose to embrace, listen to, and nurture all of our characters, we will mature, grow, and evolve into that person our dog already thinks we are.

Just to clarify, in this book we are talking about four predictable and easy to identify characters that we all have, based on the anatomy of our brain. Every ability we have is completely dependent on the underlying brain cells that manufacture those abilities, and these four different groups of cells manufacture four different skill sets, ultimately resulting in the expression of each of our Four Characters. When many authors and teachers refer to the authentic self, you may wonder which of these Four Characters they might be referring to. In fact, from the way they describe the “authentic self,” it is clear that they are referring to Character 4. But please understand that none of the Four Characters is more authentic than the others. Each of these characters represents an authentic part of who we are at a cellular level and should be treated with dignity, respect, and honor.

A Note on Brain Disorders

It is important to note that the material presented here is not related to either schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder, which are both serious neuropsychiatric disorders. The word schizophrenia by definition means “split brain,” but the division that it describes is a break between the brain of a person and the accepted norms of its surrounding society.

The necessary criteria for someone to be diagnosed with the brain disorder schizophrenia is the experience of sensory hallucinations supported by a delusional thinking system. If your brain is inputting abnormal sensory perceptions of the world because you are seeing, smelling, or hearing things that others are not experiencing, it is impossible for your brain to use those building blocks to construct a normal perception of the world. Predictably, your brain would create a delusional thinking system matching the altered input. Not only do the brains of people with schizophrenia process incoming data in error from normal perception, but there are alterations in the internal wiring of that information. As a result, the brain of a person with schizophrenia is split from normal information processing at a cellular level, and the resultant delusional thinking system is a byproduct of that brain’s abnormal neurological miswiring.

Multiple personality disorder (MPD) is a completely different brain disorder from schizophrenia. There is a lot that is not known about this disorder, including why or how a brain is capable of manufacturing multiple personalities. Sometimes these personalities don’t even know about one another, or they may exist in conflict. MPD is a pathological condition that may be manifested as a coping tool in response to childhood trauma. In the case of MPD, the split in consciousness occurs within the brain, whereas in schizophrenia the split occurs between the consciousness of the brain and its perception of external reality.

After the stroke, once my whole brain came back online and all four of my characters became fully functional again, I learned that I have the ability to not only recognize which circuitry or character I am running but to choose whether I want to continue running that circuit or switch to a different one. This unusual journey has helped me understand that not only I but all of us have incredible power concerning who and how we want to be. My passion is for you to master your own Four Characters so you, too, can completely own your power and live your best life.

In the following chapters we will explore the anatomy and psychology of the brain’s two hemispheres and Four Characters in more detail. (Don’t worry—I will make this as interesting and simple as I can.) From there we will explore the unique skill sets that each of the Four Characters specialize in and help you identify which character you are inhabiting at any moment based on what they feel like inside of your body.

Then, as we move farther into the book, not only will you meet and get to know the Four Characters of your left and right thinking Characters 1 and 4, and your left and right emotional Characters 2 and 3, but you will gain insight into how these Four Characters can interact and work together on your behalf.

When we know, understand, and nurture our own Four Characters, their relationships with one another, and their collective power within us, we promote our own cognitive, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellness. This is whole-brain living. I truly believe that this is the evolutionary goal of humanity, and we are getting there one brain at a time.

CHAPTER 2