My stroke has become me (pair) science

Jill B. Taylor is a brave woman who suffered a stroke and wrote a frank book about this in the genre of “scientific introspection”. The famous American neurobiologist tried not only to cope with the disease that was unexpectedly hit on her, but also to turn his ailment into a subject of research. Explaining in simple words and elementary drawings, how exactly its nervous system was struck by hemorrhage, Taylor describes in detail the processes of extinction and restoration of neural cells. Having devoted a lot of time to the preparation of other people's brains, this time the researcher “dissects” herself, turning the inner world of her sensations, experiences, fears and hopes to the reader inside out. True, closer to the end of the book, a stream of emotions and, to put it mildly, strange ideas seriously reduces its scientific value, turning the author into a preacher of a new “philosophy of life”.

The first few sections of the book are devoted to a brief scientific autobiography and a description of the structure of the brain in the understanding of any non -specialist language. Without going into small details, the author in general features outlines the work of the human nervous system, the features of interdemlinary asymmetry and some disturbances in the brain of the brain. There is such an introduction that the reader is inexperienced in matters of neuroanatomy can understand how exactly hemorrhage in certain areas of the brain leads to one or another malfunction in the work of the nervous system. Specialists are unlikely to find something new for themselves here. But subsequent chapters can really enrich our ideas about how a person who has undergone hemorrhage is experiencing changes taking place in his brain and in the rest of the body. Taylor talks in detail about his own sensations from the moment the first symptoms of hemorrhage occur, describing the gradual and seemingly irreversible fading of the main functions of the nervous system, which is reflected at all levels of the body. A retrospective analysis of one’s own state is sometimes too colorful and emotional, saturated images and epithets. The author is at the same time horrified and admires the changes that occur with her, using the “opportunity” that has fallen in order to better understand the work of the human brain. However, such a view from the inside is valuable in their own way, as it allows scientists, doctors and relatives who have suffered a stroke of people to understand how they perceive themselves and the surrounding world, being in a state of "all-consuming silence."

Fortunately, Taylor managed to get out, and not least thanks to loved ones. Talking about how mother cared about her and how doctors treated her differently, she teaches us another lesson: a person always remains a man, even if he becomes like a limp vegetable. Therefore, the scientist devoted a separate section to the description of the most important psychological needs that a person who has suffered a stroke and has lost some human abilities - to speak, hear and correctly understand others, care for himself.

In the last chapters of the book, the author turns to existential experience gained as a result of the disease, and analyzes it not so much from a scientific point of view as from the point of view of the enlightened guru. In all seriousness, Jill B. Taylor writes about how to talk with his own neural cells correctly, cheer them up every day and thank them for plasticity and performance. “In addition to the fact that I spend a lot of time, once making it with cells of my own brain, my life is also a big festival of love, which I celebrate along with 50 trillion molecular geniuses, of which my body consists,” and then the author represents his psyche as “the sacred part of the universe, the division that the universe entrusted to me for it for it throughout my life.”

The advice that Taylor addresses people who want to find peace of mind are banal in places, and in some places they cause a skeptical smile. Founding the reader to the field of metaphysical constructions, the author tells how the experience of experience helped her not only better understand the work of the brain from a scientific point of view, but also pushed to rethink his own life, expanded the ideas about the universe and his place in it. Perhaps Taylor, as a result of her illness, really discovered something new about the structure and functioning of the nervous system of people, about the relationship of an individual and the Universe. That's just which of her discoveries are scientific, and which are paranable, you have to independently understand the course of reading the book.

Taylor J.​ B.​ My stroke was to me Science : History own Diseases told by a neuroblog . - M .: Corpus , 2012.