Last Updated on July 4, 2026
Resident Paul Rao will review My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 at 7 PM in the Auditorium. This is his review for the July 2026 issue of The Sunburst.
On December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a 37-year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist, experienced a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. As she began to deteriorate to the point where she could no longer walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life–all within four hours–Taylor alternated between the euphoria of the intuitive, kinesthetic
right brain, where she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace, and the logical, sequential left brain, which registered that she was having a stroke and moved her to seek help before it was too late. It would take her eight years to fully recover.
For Taylor, the stroke offered both a blessing and a revelation. She learned that by “stepping to the right” of our left brain, we can uncover feelings of well-being that are often overshadowed by left-side “brain chatter.” She tells her story from pre-stroke through her lengthy recovery, including her subsequent noteworthy career as a scientific advocate for lifelong brain health.
In the end, Jill Bolte Taylor became a world-famous neuroanatomist not because of her training and research but because she became her own subject. Come to the July Book Review to hear more about this inspiring woman and the lessons learned from her “stroke of insight.”
Paul Rao PhD, retired Chief Operating Officer at MedStar National Rehab Hospital, was also a speech language pathologist with expertise in adult neuro-communication disorders post-stroke. He is widely published in the field of stroke and aphasia, and was editor of Managing Stroke: A Guide to Living Well.