Brains and Science Fiction

Happy Mom on her 88th Birthday

Have just finished reading My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. I read this now because a young friend's husband had the same type of stroke recently and I wanted to understand how it happens and what Taylor's experience was. She was only 37 and for anyone in another field it must be terrifying, but she is a neuroanatomist, who studies brain function and so to her it was fascinating what was happening to her brain and how it recovered. As a scientist she studied carefully what she was losing and what was left (or right, actually). Her hemorrhagic stroke shut down the left side of her brain, leaving her with the right side, no word processing or mathematic or logical thinking processes, but a fantastic feeling of euphoria, oneness with the universe, bliss. She wanted to keep those feelings and knew that as her left brain functions started to come back that she would have to fight the negative emotions that left brains are so good at stirring up, to retain her feeling of well-being.





Of course, she wanted what her left brain could give her--language, organization skill, common sense, memory--what she didn't want was the looping of fear thought or judgmental thought or worry or anger that the left side of the brain can bring. She wanted to remain, as much as possible, in the here and now. She actually has been able to do this to a large extent and at the end of her book tries to help the rest of us, who haven't experienced her dramatic route to enlightenment, with some techniques to shut down those emotions that we may want to acknowledge, but not encourage.






What really struck me, though, was Taylor's description of someone who is right brain prominent. It sounded so much like my mother! I am often frustrated with my mother's apparent lack of common sense or organizational skills; I am like the left brain censuring the right brain. My Mom, however, lives in a happy world. She doesn't judge, she sees life positively, she is trusting, enthusiastic, grateful for her health, she has childlike curiosity. She doesn't dwell on her age or think about death, either hers or the deaths of her husband, son and friends. She is sad for a short time and then she is done being sad. She is rarely angry. Part of this is that her memory is failing--and memory is a function of our left brain. It could be said that as she gets older and her left brain becomes less active, her right brain, which has always been stronger, is stronger still. And though this manifests itself in losing her purse, or forgetting appointments, or not remembering what I told her 30 minutes before or not being able to find her way to church, the result is also that she is a very happy and contented person. When she broke her shoulder and cracked her kneecap a year or so ago, she often asked me what had happened to her shoulder, how had she fallen, had she really been in a nursing home for 6 days. As she healed she would even forget that anything had happened at all. I think this forgetting helped her heal and to regain the use of her arm more thoroughly than the doctor had ever expected. She didn't fret or moan about her pain, she viewed the physical therapy as a social event, and for the most part she simply forgot that she had been injured. Her right brain, full of happiness, dominates, and it is restorative.






My mother has not always been this way, although, being an artist and singer she was always more right than left brained. She used to get angry, yell, rail at her husband and children, bemoan the responsibilities of being a woman in charge of a home. She was often frustrated by a husband who was egotistical and controlling. It is only in these latter years, as she slowly loses some of her faculties, that she has come to this state of peaceful happiness. I will try to remember that losing one's memory may not be all bad. It may be the bliss we are looking for.





And on to something completely different: science fiction Academy Award nominated movies. Last weekend we went to see Avatar, in the actual movie theater, a very unusual event for us. It was in 3-D, with new, improved 3-D glasses, plastic instead of paper, not irritating as the old ones were and the 3-D really did pop off the screen. But what I loved about this movie was the beauty and color of it. James Cameron created a gorgeous world with beautiful creatures who had a deep and lovely connection to their world. We earthlings were ugly and aggresive of course, but in the end there was a satisfying conclusion. You will think of what the U.S. did to the American Indians. All I could say when we left the theater was WOW. And I'm still saying WOW.





The very next day we watched District 9, another earthlings versus aliens movie. The contrast in the two movies was extraordinary. Where Avatar was dazzling in it's beauty and high tech, District 9 was ugly in the extreme. The aliens looked like bugs rather than gods, they clicked rather than speaking, they lived in a dirty slum. The violence was more graphic, these aliens had arrived here on earth rather than the aliens in Avatar whose planet was discovered by us. But in both stories the earthlings were the aggressors and oppresors--roles I would not put past us.
In both movies we earthlings are redeemed by one of two "good" people, who see what is happening and try to change the course of events. And in this case, you will be reminded of Apartheid. Man's inhumanity to man is translated into our inhumanity to aliens.

See both movies--it is interesting to see how two different writers and directors deal with a similar subject.