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First, I want to thank everyone for their participation and great thoughts and ideas on Monday evening. 

I read Taylor's book this summer, and initially, I was amazed. I thought the work was brilliant, courageous, and compelling. However, both while preparing for the presentation and participating in our discussion on Monday, I became more and more skeptical of both Taylor's account and her work as a whole. Perhaps reading the entirety of "Stroke of Insight" from start to finish puts Dr. Taylor's account of her stroke in a better scientific and rehabilitative context. The initial chapters of her book, which were not part of the excerpt read in class, discuss the pathophysiology behind the stroke and seek to justify the theory of hemispheric asymmetry by discussing both lesioned and split brain patients. Although she does present some outdated and seemingly subjective information about feelings and memories, Taylor also includes information about where language centers are located and what type of information is commonly processed in different locations (Her discussion of hemispheric asymmetry is not just that we should enter the nirvana of our right brain, the impression some of the class might have gleaned from the video). Perhaps reading these more scientific chapters in addition to the more philosophical components of the book caused me to view it so differently. Another reason for my drastic shift in opinion of Dr. Taylor's account could be due to the fact that during the summer, I was reading the book for pleasure and because rehabilitation and regenerative medicine are things that greatly interest me. While reading the excerpt and watching Dr. Taylor's presentation at the TED conference for our seminar class, I was trying to place her work into an academic and strictly scientific context. The inclusion of subjectivity and personal experience, which initially captivated me and was my favorite part of her account, is now essentially an academic turn-off of sorts. 

After four years in the bi-co, when I hear about new treatments for diseases, I find myself unconsciously subjecting them to a scientific method test. Did they have appropriate controls? Is the sample size large enough to be statistically significant? Throughout the week however, I've been thinking that at least in the treatment of mental and brain illnesses, there is some place for subjectivity, especially as if Paul mentioned, there is some non-calibrateable, non-reproducible entity in each of us. Maybe Dr. Taylor's account will allow neuroscientists to get a better understanding of what it is like for an individual to EXPERIENCE a stroke, not just what it is like to HAVE a stroke. 

I also wanted to briefly comment about a point Melissa brought up in class re: locked in syndrome; that in the U.K. LIS is viewed as worse than death. When I initially read the article about LIS, I was shocked about how high patients rated their quality of life, and was surprised that the class didn't seem to have as strong as a response as I did to this phenomenon (Given that there is such disconnect between the views of doctors/caregivers (i.e. the UK point) and the patients' experience).