Stroke, LSD - Same Thing

[create_destiny]

I heard a fascinating interview on NPR today with a neurological researcher named Jill Bolte Taylor whose book My Stroke of Insight came out in paperback today. This video is from a talk Taylor gave a year ago about what she experienced while having a stroke.

Comments

[anodyne19148.livejournal.com]

I'm fascinated by this stuff. From what I've read LSD taps into a part of the brain in a way that it mimics various mental disorders. I don't doubt that a stroke can have an odd effect like that.

Funny, I was reading about neurons at work today.

[createdestiny.livejournal.com]

I'm now fascinated with more right-brain living and less left-brain living. Aside from hitting myself head on the left side with a baseball bat, I wonder how this can be "chosen."

[anodyne19148.livejournal.com]

I don't think it can be "chosen" very easily without illicit substances or a hit to the head.

But seriously, she spoke of something I experience a lot--I can only call it the state of "in between." I've commented on your blog before that I have very lucid dreams and I sometimes feel that I go somewhere beyond life and living in some of my dreams. My dreams make me believe very much in an after life and God or god or dog. ;-)

I think there is something more to us as humans than we realize.

[createdestiny.livejournal.com]

God, I hope so.

[gracegiver]

oh yea, this captivated me when I first saw it. I didn't know she was being interviewed on NPR. I should go hunt it down.

[metalgypsy.livejournal.com]

i heard alot of this interview today too!!

the brain

[lcurtis.livejournal.com]

Intriguing stuff. While I do not look forward to a stroke (it's the drooling and pooping that would bother me) I am fascinated by the subject. My one "LSD trip" while back packing in the Black Hills back in the seventies remains a high point of insight for me one that I would love to duplicate, sometime, before I "shuffle off" or perhaps while I shuffle off.
I am sure that we all have read "Doors of Perception" and the works of John Lilly however note that in my years of working with mentally ill (a societal observation) I have encountered some people who entered into a "drug" induced psychosis and never returned. Caution is advised.

[whosplittheatom.livejournal.com]

What an amazing experience.

Some of her description (in the shower, dialing the phone, etc.) reminded me a *lot* of what it's like for me most of the times I've smoked weed, which is why I came to the decision/realization that I can't do it. It's like the right hemisphere wants to get totally lost in all the expansiveness while at the same time the left hemisphere is freaking out trying to categorize and make rational sense out of everything, having anxiety about various fears (dying, etc.), not wanting to "let go", etc. That's sort of my usual dynamic anyway, but substances seem to amplify it to an unpleasant degree.

Like we were talking about earlier, I really do wonder how much of religion, philosophy, culture, and just the whole human experience in general is a sort of outward projection of the feedback loop between our collective left-brains and right-brains. Or more accurately, our collective right brain and 6+ billion individualistic left brains!

[createdestiny.livejournal.com]

I think my left-brain is ruling my life and I hate it.

[whosplittheatom.livejournal.com]

I think they just need to learn to get along and communicate better, like any married couple.

[createdestiny.livejournal.com]

Good analogy.