This year I tasked myself with the New Year’s Resolution of reading one book a week. Throughout the year I plan on making intermittent blog posts exploring my take aways from some of the books that make a strong impression on me. The week of January 31, 2021 I read ‘My Stroke of Insight’ by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph. D, a Harvard trained neuroscientist. This book details Dr. Taylor’s observations regarding her stroke experience and the recovery that followed. She briefly touches on topics of neuroscience followed by deeper insights into her gained understanding of stroke recovery, overall well being, and happiness.

I have always had an underlying interest and curiosity for neuroscience. In college I began a neuroscience minor before deciding neuro fit my interests better as a side hobby and switching to math. However, this curiosity never disappeared, and it drew me to the unique perspective offered by Dr. Taylor’s neuroscientific recounting of her stroke. After finishing this book, I can not recommend it enough as an avenue for self reflection, gratitude, and inspiration. Here I outline some of my key take aways.

General Bio and Neuro Fun(?) Facts

The majority of the book is narrative in fashion, but the opening two chapters introduce the reader to a quick, layman friendly, technical explanation of the neuroanatomy and neuro-mechanisms underlying strokes. I want to share some interesting facts I learned about the different ways strokes manifest, and why they happen.

Did you know that blood is toxic to neurons if it comes in direct contact with them? I did not. If a vein ruptures in the brain and blood spills out, the blood kills any neurons it touches. This is why aneurysms (caused by the rupturing a blood vessel) and other hemorrhagic strokes can be so crippling and often deadly. Terrifying… but also fascinating.

In these chapters Dr. Taylor explains how the majority of strokes occur due to blood clots cutting off the oxygen supply to the brain and causing the traumatization and death of neurons. She goes on to elaborate on how a smaller minority of strokes can also take place due to the rupturing of a blood vessel or vein spilling blood into the brain, and, again, killing neurons (which is what happened to her).

(Not quite so) fun facts!

Computational Language in the Biological Sciences

As information processing machines, our ability to process data about the external world begins at the level of sensory perception. pg. 18

My computer science education lacked coverage of Biology. This is expected as the overlap between these two fields is one that must be actively sought out. I have however, ventured into the subject, on occasion, in my extra-curricular reading. I’ve read two other bio-centric books1 in the last 3 or so years, and between those and this one, I find myself intrigued by how often computational style language shows up in biological writing. For example, when these texts focus on the subject of genetics, words such as code, encoding, program appear liberally. Similarly, when Dr. Taylor writes about the brain, she infuses the words machines, data, code, pixels throughout her descriptions of its operations and information processing. Examples of this can be seen in this section’s opening quote as well as the following:

Our visual field … is divided into billions of tiny spots or pixels. …this information is eventually coded as different colors by the visual cortex in the occipital region of our brain. pg. 19

This type of language makes sense to use as this is both literally and analogously what is happening biologically. With regards to genetics, chromosomes are, quite literally, a physical code for protein synthesis, and in neuroscience the human brain is indeed actively translating electro-chemical encodings into practical information.

But to me this also brings to mind questions of how and why computation embeds itself so deeply in the natural world. Recursion, a tool computer scientists are deeply acquainted with, appears again in genetic replication as well as more macroscopically in fractal formations like vegetation and coastlines.

Is the idea of computation a human creation? Or is it, in fact, an emergent property of nature? Similar questions arise in physics and quantum computing. In Quantum computing for the very curious, Michael Nielsen, expanding on David Deutsch’s original pondering over the physical nature of computation, states:

… computers aren’t just human inventions. They are a fundamental feature of the universe, the answer to a simple and profound question about how the universe works.

Where does the naturally emergent truly end and the man made begin? These lines that differentiate supposedly separate fields begin to blur when exploring these fields in conjunction.

Language Akin to that of Meditation

Throughout the book, the similarities between how Dr. Taylor spoke of her personality and mindset changes following her stroke and how experienced meditation practitioners speak about mindfulness and meditation stood out to me particularly. For example, Dr. Taylor throughout the text speaks about continuously finding ways to be present in the moment. She describes how when her mind starts drifting to subjects of the future or of the past or of distress she simply brings her focus back to the present moment and lets those thoughts pass her by:

Caught in the loop of deep grief, my chest tightens, my breathing becomes shallow, and emotionally I feel depressed. … These passionate thoughts and feelings have the potential to jump instantly into my mind, but again, … I have the power to consciously choose which emotional and physiological loops I want to hook into. pg. 163

The feeling of peace is something that happens in the present moment. It’s not something that we bring with us from the past or project into the future. Pg. 168

This parallels closely the ideas of presence and detachment that arise in meditation and mindfulness. We can see the in How to Meditate , where mindful.org states:

When we pay attention to our breath, we are learning how to return to, and remain in, the present moment—to anchor ourselves in the here and now on purpose, without judgement.

Furthermore, this article goes on to elaborate on some of the key behaviors that underly mindfulness practice and how they bring about an ability to choose one’s focus:

We “practice” mindfulness so we can learn how to recognize when our minds are doing their normal everyday acrobatics, and maybe take a pause from that for just a little while so we can choose what we’d like to focus on. How to Meditate

This resonates with the way Dr. Taylor described her ability to become abstractly aware of her emotions and “choose” what feelings to hook into and which feelings to let go of. Much like the earlier quote, she again states:

I learned that I had the power to choose whether to hook into a feeling and prolong its presence in my body, or just let it quickly flow right out of me. Pg. 126

Dr. Taylor uses her experience to encourage the reader to engage with the present more often and be more introspective towards the state of their mind and body. The philosophy and behaviors that Dr. Taylor advocates for are not necessarily identical to those encouraged by mindfulness proponents, but they are in many ways similar and seek to produce the same results.

I am by no means a highly experienced practitioner of mindfulness, but I have, at times, engaged in periods of consistent daily meditation that produced a heightened sense of awareness over the thoughts and emotions that arose in my mind and body. Anecdotally, I can concur that this awareness gave rise to a nuanced understanding of choice over how to react to those feelings, and at times even allowed for the embracing or releasing of them at will. Remnants of this awareness have continued existing in my conscious psyche, but not as vividly without extended periods of consistent meditation practice.

More comparisons between mindfulness teachings and Dr. Taylor’s insights continue throughout the book. A common description of meditation involves imagining your thoughts as clouds floating in the wind. As they come into your mind, you acknowledge their presence, but you do not hold on to them, you simply let them drift away with the breeze. Similarly, Dr. Taylor states:

Become aware of your extraneous thoughts, thank them for their service, and ask them to be silent for a little while. Pg. 170

In this same way, Dr. Taylor alludes to a certain detachment from thoughts and emotions while still acknowledging them so as to allow for a choice in their engagement, just as mindfulness does.

Furthermore, guided meditations, a popular introductory avenue into the mindfulness practice, often instruct the participant to place their focus on their senses. To focus on how their breath feels flowing in and out of their lungs. How their body feels against the ground or chair they are sitting on. What kind of sounds or smells they notice around them. If a thought comes in, they are told not to reject it, but to also not embrace it. Again, it is meant to be but a cloud drifting through the wind. They let it go, and return the attention to the senses or a mantra or the counting of their breaths.

Dr. Taylor speaks of how she engages in this same kind of behavior:

To help me find my way back into my peaceful right mind, … I find that paying attention to sensory information as it streams into my body is a very helpful tool. Pg 171

She elaborates on this by speaking about her focus on the breath and the body and how she relates that back to the present moment, much like mindfulness:

If you will, think about your breathing. … What is going on inside your body? Is it in a comfortable position? … Take another deep breath, and now another. Relax into your body … Revel in the fact that in this moment, you are a living, thriving human being! Pg. 171

The parallels to mindfulness can again be seen in its meditation practices:

Try this: feel your feet on the ground right now. In your shoes or without, it doesn’t matter. Then track or scan over your whole body, bit by bit—slowly—all the way up to the crown of your head. The point of this practice is to check in with your whole body… Only rules are: No judging, no wondering, no worrying (all activities your mind may want to do); just check in with the physical feeling of being in your body. Aches and pains are fine. You don’t have to do anything about anything here. You’re just noticing. How to Meditate

These key insights from Dr. Taylor’s experience resonate throughout the book, and she places significant emphasis on them. However, Dr. Taylor never mentions meditation or mindfulness or makes any direct connection to it, and many tenets that constitute mindfulness practice are missing from her narrative. Regardless, it is widely agreed that there is no one “correct” way to engage in meditation, it is instead an umbrella term that encapsulates many different disciplines, mindfulness among them, and I would go as far as claiming that if one subscribes to the ideas and behaviors that Dr. Taylor advocates for, the subsequent actions and results fall under said umbrella.

Concluding Thoughts

I don’t know exactly what I hope to achieve with this or any future blog posts. The format is not exactly conventional. It feels very much like it exists in an in-between-state, not quite an essay, but also rather long when compared to traditional blog posts. Something of an organized post-stream of consciousness. Anyhow, it is of value to me to organize my post-reading thoughts in this way, and I hope that as a reader you may derive some value from it too.

With regards to ‘My Stroke of Insight’, it is not a terribly long read (roughly 196 pages), and if you feel compelled to read it after having read this post, I hope you find that there is even more value to be extracted from its pages than just what I have detailed here. Dr. Taylor’s resilience, determination, and success in recovering from her stroke after having lost the majority of her faculties inspired me to be a happier, more appreciative person, and hopefully it can do so for you as well.

1. The two other bio books I have read recently are The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee and The Language of God by Francis Collins.

Thanks to Ryan Wells, Hannah Gooden, and Ross Hardin for reading drafts of this.