JAD ABUMRAD: Hey. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab. This hour ...

ROBERT: I'm talking ...

JAD: Blah blah blah.

ROBERT: Words.

JAD: The power of words.

ROBERT: So once words enter your head, once they tickle in there and we just explained how that happens ...

JAD: Sort of.

ROBERT: ... then they—how do you know they're always there?

JAD: What if they're not? What would happen if that—that throng that is in your head ...

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: ... what if all of that stuff, whatever's in your head, suddenly went—poof! Got yanked right out of your head?

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: What would be left?

ROBERT: Well, this got us thinking about a very famous talk at one of the TED conferences.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: I grew up to study the brain because ...]

ROBERT: A talk given by a neuroanatomist named Jill Bolte. Is it Bolte or Bolt?

JAD: Bolte.

ROBERT: Bolte Taylor.

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: And all you really need to know is that one morning in December of 1996, Doctor Taylor woke up and she had—she had a headache.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jill Bolte Taylor: I woke up to a pounding pain behind my left eye. And it was the kind of pain, caustic pain that you get when you bite into ice cream. And it just gripped me and then it released me. And it was very unusual for me to ever experience any kind of—of pain so I thought okay, I'll just start my normal routine. So I got up and I jumped onto my cardio-glider, which is a full-body, full-exercise machine. And I'm jamming away on this thing, and I'm realizing that my hands look like primitive claws grasping onto the bar. And I thought, "Whoa, I'm a weird looking thing!" So I get off the machine, and I'm standing in my bathroom getting ready to step into the shower, and then I lost my balance and I'm propped up against the—the wall. And I'm asking myself what is wrong with me? What is going on? And in that moment my right arm went totally paralyzed by my side.]

ROBERT: In fact, a blood vessel in the left hemisphere of Jill's brain had popped. And that part of her brain was starting to shut down.

JAD: And it was the shut down that really caught our attention.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jill Bolte Taylor: In that moment, my brain chatter went totally silent. Just like someone took a remote control and pushed the mute button. So here I am in this space, and my job and any stress related to my—my job it was gone. And I felt lighter in my body. And then all of a sudden my left hemisphere comes back online and it says to me, "Hey! We're having a stroke, we gotta get some help!" And I'm going, "Aah! I got a problem! I got a problem!" So it's like okay, okay. I got a problem. But then I immediately drifted right back out. And I affectionately refer to this space as "La La Land."]

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: So I'm just watching my brain become more and more incapable of functioning.

ROBERT: That is Jill Bolte Taylor herself.

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: Hi Robert.

JAD: We actually got her into a studio.

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: Hello Jad.

JAD: Hello.

JAD: Because we wanted to ask some questions about that moment when her inner voices went away.

ROBERT: So let's talk about brain chatter for a moment.

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: Mm-hmm.

ROBERT: In the story that we've told so far, you're still asking yourself questions.

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: Yeah.

ROBERT: Now did that stop?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: It—on the morning of the stroke I was doing this wafting dance between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. So language would come back on. But once I got to the emergency room and I passed out, when I woke later that afternoon, I had absolutely no language.

JAD: Did you know your name?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: No.

JAD: Did you know your address?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: No.

ROBERT: Did you know about your summer from 1983?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: No.

JAD: You know, like, my mom is so and so?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: I didn't know any of that.

JAD: None of it?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: I didn't know any of that.

ROBERT: Just imagine: she's lying in her bed. Her head is shaved, wrapped in bandages. She's had hours of brain surgery, she's got tubes coming out of her mouth, out of her nose. She's lost her career, she's lost her language.

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: And I lost all my memories.

ROBERT: And yet, she says, sitting there in that suddenly wordless space ...

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: I had found a peace inside of myself that I had not known before. I had pure silence inside of my mind. Pure silence.

JAD: Pure silence?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: Pure silence.

JAD: What was ...

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: You know, not that little voice that—that, you know, you wake up in the morning and the first thing your brain says is, "Oh, man. The sun is shining." Well, imagine that you don't hear that little voice that says, "Man, the sun is shining," you just experience the sun and the shining.

ROBERT: Is this the absence of reflection of any kind?
JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: Is it just sensual intake and—period?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: That is exactly what it was. It was—it was all of the present moment.

JAD: Did you have thoughts?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: I had joy.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: I just had joy. I had—I had this magnificent experience of I'm this collection of these beautiful cells. I'm organic. I'm this—this organic entity.

ROBERT: Did you have a Deadhead period by any chance?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: [laughs] You know, I missed that by a few years, but I get a lot of that.

ROBERT: And the other thing that she told us is that lying in that bed without words, she says she felt connected to things—to everything—in a way that she never had before.

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: Oh, yeah. I lost all definition of myself in relationship to everything in the external world.

JAD: You mean like you couldn't figure out where you ended?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: Mm-hmm.

ROBERT: How much of that was—was about language? A little part? A lot? I mean ...

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: Well, I would say it was huge. Language is an ongoing information processing. It's the constant reminder. I am. This is my name, this is all the data related to me. These are my likes and my dislikes, these are my beliefs. I am an individual, I'm a single, I'm a solid, I'm separate from you. This is my name ...

JAD: Now as fruity as this may sound to pin all this on language, we have run into this idea before a couple seasons ago. Paul Broks, remember him?

ROBERT: Yeah, sure.

JAD: Neuropsychologist.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Paul Broks: Well, if you want to ask me about myself ...]

JAD: He told me that there is a theory out there—which he believes, actually—that all a person is in the end, like all the personhood of a person, the I or the you of a person, all that is in the end is a ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Paul Broks: Story.]

JAD: A story you tell yourself.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Paul Broks: What we normally think of when we think about ourselves is really a story. It's the story of what's happened to that body over time.]

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: I did not have that portion of my language center that tells a story ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jill Bolte Taylor: Curious little Jill. Me, Jill Bolte Taylor climbing the Harvard ladder.]

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: ... through language.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Jill Bolte Taylor: Loves dissection, cutting up things.]

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: That language was gone. I got to essentially become an infant again.

ROBERT: And this is the problem here.

JAD: What do you mean?

ROBERT: When you drop out of the I-ness of yourself or the story of yourself, then you are left, she says at peace. I could argue that that's just stranded, that's stranded in the sunshine, with the wind, in the now.

JAD: But I mean, it's not like she stayed there.

ROBERT: Well, that's true.

JAD: I mean, we wouldn't be talking to her if she had. And as she started to recover, she ran into something kinda interesting, which sounded to me sort of like what maybe the rats and the babies go through in the white room. She would have these disparate thoughts and then stall out. Like she couldn't bring them together.

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: Yeah. When—when people would speak to me I would—I remembered in pictures. So if somebody would ask me who's the president of the United States of America, this is a huge question. So for the next several hours I'd be pondering. "President. President. President. What's a president? President." And then I would get a picture in my mind of a president as a leader.

JAD: Was it a picture of a specific guy?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: It's—it was—actually it still flashes into my mind. It's a picture of a silhouette of a male.

ROBERT: A presidential profile.

JAD: Like maybe the idea of a president, basically.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: So that was her president.

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: And then I had to figure out a United States. And so eventually I come up with this map in my mind, this picture of the United States.

JAD: Like a line drawing. So now she's got this map, she's got this silhouette of a guy. And she said after hours ...

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: President. United States. President. United States. And it was like, "Oh my God!"

JAD: ... she still couldn't somehow bring them together.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: And I didn't have the road that I had to travel in order to come up with—I think it was Clinton at the time. Yeah, it was Clinton at the time.

JAD: Now as Jill starts to get better ...

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: This is after eight years of hard work and recovery.

ROBERT: ... finally the words start to trickle back.

JAD: And when they did, she says, that silence that she loved so much got pushed out.

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: That was one of the sacrifices. For me that was one of the sacrifices.

JAD: Wow!

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: [laughs] Wow!

ROBERT: [laughs] We're doing a —we're doing a language show here and you're the anti-queen of our language show! You're, like, saying who needs it? What the hell?

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: No. No, no, no, no. No, but what I am saying is that in order for us to communicate with language, we pull ourselves away from a different kind of experience. I do believe that there are times when you need to let your brain chatter be quiet.

ROBERT: But is it fair to say that this is—please agree or disagree with this statement.

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: [laughs]

ROBERT: I think that words and language and grammar are necessary, but not half as good as wind in my hair, as smell in my nose, and that old right brain sensual immediacy.

JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: Yeah. You know, if I had to choose—which is essentially what you're saying, if I had to choose, that would be a really, really, really tough decision.

JAD: Jill Bolte Taylor is the author of—what's it called, the book?

ROBERT: My Stroke of Insight.

JAD: Yes. Check our website, Radiolab.org for any details. And if you subscribe to our podcast there is a bonus video that goes along with this hour. And it's pretty great.

[JAMES SHAPIRO: This is a voice message from Professor Jim Shapiro. Support for NPR comes from NPR stations and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.]

[JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: Helping NPR advance journalistic excellence in the digital age.]

[JAMES SHAPIRO: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and ...]

[JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: ... committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information at MacFound.org. And ...]

[CHARLES FERNYHOUGH: ... the George Lucas Educational Foundation, providing schools that work ...]

[JILL BOLTE TAYLOR: ... strategies for 21st-century success.]

[JAMES SHAPIRO: Learn more at Edutopia.org.]

[CHARLES FERNYHOUGH: This is NPR.]

 

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