Not Born Yesterday

I was sent an amazing video clip last week. The 'star' was a neuroanatomist called Jill Bolte Taylor, and she was addressing an audience on the subject of her experience - which is also the subject of a book recently published by Viking, My Stroke of Insight. You can catch some of the controversy surrounding it at http://wordpress.com/tag/my-stroke-of-insight/ - or see the original talk at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/229.

The quick background to all this is that Ms Bolte has a schizophrenic brother. She is also (perhaps therefore) a highly respected neuroanatomist specialising in left-right hemisphere communication, and illnesses deriving therefrom. This happens to be an interest of mine too - albeit in the sense that soccer is an interest of mine, but the lady we're talking about is pretty much the Christiano Ronaldo of neuroscience.

In 1995 she had a left-hemisphere stroke, causing an enormous blod clot which (unusually) cut off all right/left brain contact - except for occasional glimpses of reality lasting a minute or so each time. Thus for much of the next three hours or so, she found herself in what she affectionately calls 'lalaland' - with no access to her experiential filing system, she had no worries, no neuroses, no 'emotional baggage' as she puts it - but no awareness whatsoever of Time.

Her account of this is by turns gripping and hilarious: as a neuroanatomist, she thinks (in the odd moments of lucidity) 'wow - this is so cool - I'm a neuroanatomist experiencing a stroke from the inside'. More controversially, she also describes precisely what Buddhists, atomic physicists and some neuroscientists say would happen without the left-brain 'reality filter' - the experience of 'NoTime', no anxiety, no aggression - and no separation. She takes a shower, for instance, and realises she can't see where her hand ends and the shower rail begins.

The controversy is simple: the medical establishment says she suffered a delusional episode, she thinks she discovered Nirvhana, and a minority of intelligent observers think her experiences both exciting and expected. In the thirteen years since, Jill Bolte Taylor has had a massive clot removed, made a slow but full recovery, and mastered the art (she claims) of causing left-brain shutdown in order to repeat her blissful experience. She remains an active and published neurological expert.

Against her is the fact that she has a book to sell - and could be nuts. For her is the fact that she is still highly respected - and what she describes is for some 'confluence thinkers' interesting but not unexpected.

Since retirement eight years ago, I have had time to study this development I’ve come to call a ‘confluence of knowledge’. The study began in earnest after I used CBT to help cure/dilute depressive tendencies I’ve had for much of my life - although it’s not bipolar. The fascination gradually moved on to take in CBT, neuroanatomy, sub-atomic physics, homoeopathy, Buddhism and a bit of ‘what’s the point of e = mc2?’ in there. (But not too much because it makes my head hurt.)

I think it just possible that Jill Bolte Taylor’s experience backs up two theories that are gaining ground as this first decade of the Third Millennium proceeds.

The first is that the left cortex acts as a ‘data filter’ before any thinking is done - purely because the electromagnetic overload of incoming information would be so overpowering without this, there’s a need to make sense of it. Einstein believed that spinning electrons ‘in two places at once’ proved that distance and separation are an illusion; this hypothesis is also, of course, central to Buddhism - which holds that time is an illusion - and ditto Einstein cf relativism. Thus Ms Bolte Taylor’s ‘delusions’ of blurred edges between atoms of her and the shower rail would seem congruent with this theory.

The second is that while both cortexes do indeed work in tandem and talk to each other, a great deal of (a) extreme behaviour and (b) delusional mental illness seems to be neuroanatomically explicable via the general principle of ‘things being/going wrong’ in terms of both the hemispherical balance - and the communication between the two.

There are several contemporary (and exciting) examples of this. The left cortex is without question the filing system; when the hypocampus connector between left and right becomes Alzheimic, the right’s access to left ‘filing’ data is lost or interrupted, and apparently random memory failure occurs. This can only be stopped (at present) by ‘filling the holes’ with drugs such as Aricept.

On a similar principle, the left brain is far better at distinguishing reality than the right; recent schizophrenia research in the UK has shown convincing evidence that delusional behaviour of that nature is directly related to blockage along the synapses providing the right hemisphere with information about (for example) what is a dream and what is conscious reality. Early studies of psychopathy on this basis have identified not only the gene almost certainly responsible for it, but the likelihood that a congenital defect afflicts the sufferer - viz, there is NO/restricted ACCESS to that emotional area saying 'killing folks is bad'.

We are all aware of right and left brain imbalances in our own (and others' public) lives. Gordon Brown is clearly very left-hemisphere: linear, logical but missing a few sympathy bits here and there. Most senior soccer players display signs of having no left hemisphere at all, but sadly, no control over neanderthal violence in the right-hand one. At the end of her talk, Ms Taylor makes a simple (perhaps naive) point: if those taking the big decisions could get more in touch with the right cortex (and block off some of the muttering maths in the left) we'd be better off as a species.

Personally, I find her 'lalaland' description more accurate than Nirvhana. Whether she reached Nirvhana or not, it's clear that if everyone shut down the left hemisphere for good, the world would be like San Francisco in 1967 within months. On the other hand, we're back again at the question of balance. Loathe as I am to admit it, a genuinely caring and likeable Gordon Brown would probably be the greatest Prime Minister in history. So the lady is offering us a lesson here.

One thing I can tell you for sure: Ms Taylor may be a tad too Messianic for some tastes, but she is NOT delusional. I watched the lecture a couple of times, and the combination of humour, logic and suggesting (rather than insisting) are entirely inconsistent with delusional patients.

I retain an open mind. For over a hundred years, mainstream medicine has insisted that homoeopathic doses could not possibly be therapeutic; now sub-atomic physics suggests that in that realm, most actions are reversed. I still think it likely that the 'confluence theory' of insight and discovery will teach us a lot about both the how and why of the Universe.

But there is one further, intriguing thought that Jill Bolte Taylor hasn't (as far as I know) suggested. Could it be, I wonder, that some or all of the great prophets suffered a left-hemisphere stroke - perhaps of a less dangerous magnitude - that went untreated?

This is a theory and no more - but consider: for thirty-one years of a planet-changing life, Jesus of Nazareth remains so obscure that many people (even many Christians) think he may well have been mythical. (Just to be awkward, while I'm not a Christian, the evidence suggests to me that Christ almost certainly did exist - but we'll leave that for another day).

The next thing we know, he walks out of his carpentry shop (which clearly wasn't setting the world alight - no Viscount Linley he) and starts gathering disciples, miraculously helping with the wedding catering, healing lepers and all the rest of it. He talks of a God from Before Time, elephants getting through needle-eyes, the need to reject the material. He goes into the desert and sees visions. He makes blind people see. He attracts huge crowds. And, in the end, worries the Roman-Jewish elite so much, they crucify him. This is some career change.

For an appreciable part of his fairly long life, the Lord Buddha is an angst-ridden, spoilt young man from a good family with every kind of problem - mainly, him. And then without too much prologue, he bisects his heartbeat, goes into a trance for three days, and comes out saying that everything is an illusion - separation, the material world, time, poo - the whole set is just a mirage, and unless you stay in Eternal Now your life will be miserable. He adds that Eternity is no time (not 'for all time') and effectively grasps relativity 2,500 years before Einstein, without even having a blackboard for his workings out. I've known a few juvenile delinquents in my time, but none who turned out like Buddha.

The most recent (almost universally admired) prophet in our time is Eckhart Tolle. Until the age of twenty-eight, Tolle is skipping from one side to another of the line between slightly mad and completely bonkers. A brilliant physicist (but so socially dysfunctional the best job he can get is as a lab technician) Tolle has what he describes as 'a personality breakdown', and emerges 'rebuilt' as without doubt the greatest Guru of the age.

As a lifelong cynic about self-help books, I would (indeed, have) recommended Tolle's slim volume The Power of Now to almost everyone at some time or another - and I'm not getting a cent in commission. The reason is simple: there is a practical insight on every page, and the book is written in a style which is, in and of itself, as calming as some people find The Bible.

While he can talk and write for Germany, Tolle has remained elusively sketchy about his 'breakdown'. One is left wondering if some congenital condition collided with a haemorrhage to produce this quite remarkable man.

Well, it's a thought. And for me, Jill Bolte Taylor's account offers a banquet of food for thought. Take a look at the clip and decide for yourselves.