This is one of the best TED talks I've ever seen.
"Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story of recovery and awareness -- of how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another."
"And in that moment my right arm went totally paralyzed by my side. And I realized, 'Oh my gosh! I'm having a stroke! I'm having a stroke!' And the next thing my brain says to me is, 'Wow! This is so cool. This is so cool. How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain from the inside out?'"
The page has both video of the 18 minute presentation and the text transcript. It took her 8 years to completely recover and parts of this are very funny but others are very emotional. But it's also very interesting. I knew about the two halves of the brain but I didn't realize one acted as a parallel processor and one as a serial one...
"And when you look at the brain, it's obvious that the two cerebral cortices are completely separate from one another. For those of you who understand computers, our right hemisphere functions like a parallel processor. While our left hemisphere functions like a serial processor. The two hemispheres do communicate with one another through the corpus collosum, which is made up of some 300 million axonal fibers. But other than that, the two hemispheres are completely separate. Because they process information differently, each hemisphere thinks about different things, they care about different things, and dare I say, they have very different personalities."
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