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Scientist studies others' gray matter in effort to understand why

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Oct 23, 2000 by LISA M. SODDERS Capital-Journal

By LISA M. SODDERS

The Capital-Journal

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor has an intimate understanding of the human brain.

As a scientist, she has dissected human brain tissue. As a sister, she grew up with a brother who developed schizophrenia. And as a patient, she suffered a stroke four years ago.

Taylor, 41, will give the keynote presentation Saturday at the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill Kansas annual convention in Great Bend.

"Our focus is on 'Battling Brain Disorders Together' --- that's the theme of the conference --- and her understanding, professionally and personally, of the workings of the brain is excellent," said Elizabeth Adams, executive director of NAMI Kansas.

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The conference, which runs Friday and Saturday, is open to the public. Adams said she expects more than 100 mental health professionals, consumers and family members to attend. Workshop topics include estate planning, new medications and their effectiveness, advocacy and treatment of people with concurrent mental illness and substance abuse.

"The conference heightens the awareness of the general public concerning biological brain disorders --- like any other physical disease, it should be treated with research and compassion, not stigma and rejection," Adams said.

Taylor is a published neuroscientist, specializing in the postmortem examination of the cerebral cortex of the human brain. She spent seven years performing brain research at Harvard Medical School in the departments of neuroscience and psychiatry, working with human brains postmortem and comparing normal control tissue with the brains of people with schizophrenia. She served for three years on the national board of directors of NAMI. A shortage of donated brain tissue for research led her to become the national spokeswoman for the mentally ill for the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center.

"I understood that this was just an education issue and if our families (of people with) mental illness understood, then they would donate," Taylor said.

Thus, the "Singing Scientist" was born. Taylor would travel around the country talking about mental illness and brain research. People were hungry for information on the brain, but at a certain point in her presentation, "the audience realizes, 'Oh my God, she wants my brain!' and the tension in the room can get really thick," Taylor said. "Now, I'm a nice girl, and I realize I'm traumatizing my audiences, so I've got to do something to lighten things up. So I wrote the brain bank jingle and would travel with my guitar, and as soon as that moment arrived, I would pull out the guitar and sing to them."

Taylor said she became interested in the brain as a little girl. Her 18-months-older brother has schizophrenia, and although he didn't manifest psychosis until he was in his mid-20s, he was Taylor's constant companion as a child and she noticed he was very different.

"We were a highly educated family --- both of my parents have Ph.D.s --- and we attributed some of his differentness to his own eccentricities," she said. "It really wasn't until he had raging psychoses that we could no longer sit in denial. The last thing you want to think about is that there is a real biological problem going on."

Her brother lives in a group home in southern California and is highly functional although he still experiences delusions and hallucinations. He believes he is Michael, the white horseman from the Bible, even on medication.

Her brother's biggest problem when not on medication is rage, she said. Without the rage, he can function and interact with others.

"As soon as he's removed from the meds, he returns to raving psychosis within a few days," Taylor said. "It's so clear to me, as a sister, that this is a brain disorder; the brain can become ill, just as every other organ in the body can become ill. How do we manipulate the chemicals in order to bring his mind back to peace, because there is no peace inside his thought processes."

"The number one misconception (about mental illness) is that this is a character defect," Taylor said. "It is not. It is a biological disorder; we are understanding that more and more. When we better understand which cells and what chemicals in the brain communicate, and in what quantities, then we can try to mimic that production in the mentally ill brain."

Another myth is that schizophrenia is a "split personality," Taylor said. People are diagnosed as having schizophrenia when they have two symptoms: a hallucination, or when the brain creates a perception, either visual or auditory, and doesn't recognize that it has created it; and delusion, or altered thought process.

"A third, major misconception is that people who have mental illness are dangerous," Taylor said. "In fact, most people with schizophrenia resist any kind of stimulation, so they (tend to) withdraw and isolate themselves. Except for a very small percentage of those who are ill who are not medicated and who are having raging psychosis, and those are only as violent as people who are intoxicated with alcohol. We don't need to fear them."

Scientist studies others' gray matter in effort to understand why

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Oct 23, 2000 by LISA M. SODDERS Capital-Journal

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