No.1 Brain Scientist: Your Brain Is Lying To You! Here's How I Discovered The Truth!

When neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke on the left side of her brain, her life as she knew it dissolved as she lost access to basic cognitive functions. With only her right brain hemisphere functioning, she experienced a period of cosmic bliss, unburdened by her ego and past traumas. Later, when she regained her left-brain cognitive functions, she also retained a connection to the right side of her brain that brought her profound inner peace.

Taylor’s key insight from her experience is that we can choose to access different parts of our brains and interrupt automatic thought processes and emotional reactions that don’t serve us. She links four areas of the brain to the “four characters within us”—each with their own ways of perceiving and navigating the world. In this guide, we’ll explore how the four characters show up in our lives and how to achieve emotional well-being by getting to know our four characters better. We’ll also compare Taylor’s ideas to other experts’ mindfulness techniques.

In Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett sheds light on the inner workings of the brain and how they impact feelings, behaviors, and relationships. While providing an entertaining peek behind the curtain, she argues that by understanding the basics of how your brain works, you can take a more active role in deciding how to think and behave.

Barrett’s book is a collection of eight informal essays—one for each lesson. Our guide explores those lessons through four themes: how the brain is organized, how the brain operates, how the brain develops, and how brains collaborate. Along the way, we compare Barrett’s explanations of the brain to those of other experts in neurology and offer practical applications for the insights she shares.

When neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke on the left side of her brain, she was uniquely qualified to observe and report on the experience of losing her cognitive functions. However, she was surprised to learn that as her stroke silenced her mind, she developed feelings of deep inner peace and connection that had lain dormant in the right half of her brain. Taylor’s newfound capacity for empathy and stillness redefined her awareness of herself and the world, and led her to believe that we can all find that peace if we become aware of how our brains function and consciously tap its hidden resources.

In this guide, we’ll cover Taylor’s account of her stroke, her recovery, and her insights on mental and emotional self-care. We’ll discuss Taylor’s recommendations on how best to support stroke survivors, and we’ll compare her experience to the findings of experts on neuroscience, psychology, and mental well-being.

When neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke on the left side of her brain, her life as she knew it dissolved as she lost access to basic cognitive functions. With only her right brain hemisphere functioning, she experienced a period of cosmic bliss, unburdened by her ego and past traumas. Later, when she regained her left-brain cognitive functions, she also retained a connection to the right side of her brain that brought her profound inner peace.

Taylor’s key insight from her experience is that we can choose to access different parts of our brains and interrupt automatic thought processes and emotional reactions that don’t serve us. She links four areas of the brain to the “four characters within us”—each with their own ways of perceiving and navigating the world. In this guide, we’ll explore how the four characters show up in our lives and how to achieve emotional well-being by getting to know our four characters better. We’ll also compare Taylor’s ideas to other experts’ mindfulness techniques.

According to psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, pop psychology has given us a wrong—and dangerous—impression of the brain’s two hemispheres. In The Master and His Emissary, McGilchrist rebuts the popular misconception that the brain’s left hemisphere is dominant because it’s responsible for logical thinking and problem-solving, while the right hemisphere is used only for creative endeavors. Against this myth, McGilchrist argues that the right hemisphere is more important than the left hemisphere, and failure to recognize this fact threatens to rob our lives of meaning and happiness.

In this guide, we’ll examine the differences between the brain’s hemispheres, the reasons McGilchrist thinks the right hemisphere belongs in control, and the historical eras that he says illustrate power imbalances between the hemispheres. We’ll also examine McGilchrist’s predictions about a world dominated by the left hemisphere and his reasons for thinking this world would diminish our happiness. Throughout the guide, we’ll consider counterarguments from other experts in fields like history, philosophy, and literary criticism, and we’ll discuss updates since the book’s publication.

If you’re like most people, you have a pretty good sense of who you are and how you relate to the world. But everything you know about yourself is wrong—according to neuroscientist Chris Niebauer. In No Self, No Problem, he explains that your sense of self is nothing more than an illusion crafted by your storytelling left brain. While science is just catching on to how this works, Niebauer notes that Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism have been teaching something similar for thousands of years.

In this guide, we’ll follow Niebauer through a tour of your sense of self and the brain regions that bring it into being. We’ll also consider his advice for loosening your grip on the thoughts and judgments that make you dissatisfied with your reality. Along the way, we’ll explore what other scientists, philosophers, and artists have to say about who we are and what it means to be a person.

When neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke on the left side of her brain, her life as she knew it dissolved as she lost access to basic cognitive functions. With only her right brain hemisphere functioning, she experienced a period of cosmic bliss, unburdened by her ego and past traumas. Later, when she regained her left-brain cognitive functions, she also retained a connection to the right side of her brain that brought her profound inner peace.

Taylor’s key insight from her experience is that we can choose to access different parts of our brains and interrupt automatic thought processes and emotional reactions that don’t serve us. She links four areas of the brain to the “four characters within us”—each with their own ways of perceiving and navigating the world. In this guide, we’ll explore how the four characters show up in our lives and how to achieve emotional well-being by getting to know our four characters better. We’ll also compare Taylor’s ideas to other experts’ mindfulness techniques.

When neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke on the left side of her brain, she was uniquely qualified to observe and report on the experience of losing her cognitive functions. However, she was surprised to learn that as her stroke silenced her mind, she developed feelings of deep inner peace and connection that had lain dormant in the right half of her brain. Taylor’s newfound capacity for empathy and stillness redefined her awareness of herself and the world, and led her to believe that we can all find that peace if we become aware of how our brains function and consciously tap its hidden resources.

In this guide, we’ll cover Taylor’s account of her stroke, her recovery, and her insights on mental and emotional self-care. We’ll discuss Taylor’s recommendations on how best to support stroke survivors, and we’ll compare her experience to the findings of experts on neuroscience, psychology, and mental well-being.

When neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke on the left side of her brain, she was uniquely qualified to observe and report on the experience of losing her cognitive functions. However, she was surprised to learn that as her stroke silenced her mind, she developed feelings of deep inner peace and connection that had lain dormant in the right half of her brain. Taylor’s newfound capacity for empathy and stillness redefined her awareness of herself and the world, and led her to believe that we can all find that peace if we become aware of how our brains function and consciously tap its hidden resources.

In this guide, we’ll cover Taylor’s account of her stroke, her recovery, and her insights on mental and emotional self-care. We’ll discuss Taylor’s recommendations on how best to support stroke survivors, and we’ll compare her experience to the findings of experts on neuroscience, psychology, and mental well-being.

When neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke on the left side of her brain, her life as she knew it dissolved as she lost access to basic cognitive functions. With only her right brain hemisphere functioning, she experienced a period of cosmic bliss, unburdened by her ego and past traumas. Later, when she regained her left-brain cognitive functions, she also retained a connection to the right side of her brain that brought her profound inner peace.

Taylor’s key insight from her experience is that we can choose to access different parts of our brains and interrupt automatic thought processes and emotional reactions that don’t serve us. She links four areas of the brain to the “four characters within us”—each with their own ways of perceiving and navigating the world. In this guide, we’ll explore how the four characters show up in our lives and how to achieve emotional well-being by getting to know our four characters better. We’ll also compare Taylor’s ideas to other experts’ mindfulness techniques.