My head hurts...
Most influential lists are scary, at best.

"I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be"

Well, I think this is just Dr. Taylor's personal belief -- it's not Pseudoscience. I don't think Dr. Taylor would say what she believes is grounded in "hard science." From what I've heard, she's straightforward and honest about where she's coming from.

If other people are "inspired" by Dr. Taylor's experience and what she has to say about it to try out new ways to doing things to improve their business and lives -- why not? They're talking the risks, and if their hunches and experiments pan out, they'll reap the rewards.

You don't have to be absolutely certain before you simply, intelligently, try something out.

I can tell you, as an painter and actor, however -- I think she's exactly right:

Art, like Science, extends us out into the universe, out into something infinitely larger than ourselves, and shifting into the right hemisphere certainly seems to explain a lot about how I do my work, i.e., actors are told constantly to "stop thinking," to get out of their "heads." And when I'm able to do that and I start painting and acting at a higher level, it does feel like I've made a shift somewhere . . .

and the right hemisphere seems, at least, as likely a place as any . . .

I've seen Jill Bolte Taylor's speech (forwarded to me by friends) and was astounded by her misuse of science and sensationalist exhibition of a real human brain (alas, poor Yorik!) to drum up what I saw as hippie-dippy new-age "we all are one" b.s. We need science to try to explain the unexplainable – especially the complex – and we shouldn't turn to religion or ideology to explain what science can (or will) be able to explain. But certain questions are simply not in the realm of brain science, such as, "How do we achieve world peace?" or, "What is this feeling I have that leads me to feel altruistic or optimistic?" Or to answer religious or philosophical questions like, "What is the meaning of life? What is nirvana and how do I ignore the daily insult of reality to get there?" Clearly Jill Bolte Taylor (and many others) are inspired by both their personal experiences and their newfound scientific insights through unprecedented research into the human brain. This research does not give her or anyone else the right answers to these highly subjective and complex spiritual problems. It's like in the 70s when people doing mushrooms and LSD who just discovered Buddhism wanted to unite the world in peace and love: noble and sweet, yes...but impractical and – in retrospect – silly.

Right brain/left brain stuff is nothing new. When I was in grad school in the psychology department thirty years ago, it was being aligned with Freud's id and ego. Thirty years ago I attended a human potential business seminar presented by Lou Tice of the Pacific Institute. He used a left brain/right brain model in his well-established formula for success. In 1970 I visited the Cal Tech campus and saw chimps performing as if two creatures lived in one body after corpus collosum severing procedures.

Whether it's scientifically valid or not, it achieved mainstream status decades before Jill Bolte Taylor hit the limelight. This woman, whom I expected to burst into country crooning at any moment during That Video, has created a firestorm of constant scorn, but she's doing little more than milk a well-established metaphor.

You know the old saw about any exposure being good exposure? She's sure generated lots and lots and lots of exposure. If people would ignore her, she'd wither on the vine.

Or would she? Anyone who read TRAIN YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR BRAIN, by New York Times science writer Sharon Begley, chosen by the Dali Lama to cover the neuroscience colloquium he convened, knows that science is careening around corners at breakneck speed and finding neurological explanations for all sorts of "mystical manifestations."

Who will have the last laugh?

Science knows today that there are two kinds of thinking going on our brains: logical, mathematical, analitical (left hemispehere); and intuitive, non-logical, artistic, spiritual (right hemispehere). As far as I understand this is a scientific fact.

I think that we are starting to understand that not all problems can be solved with a left-brain thinking. Now, it doesn´t mean that we can solve all problems with a right-brain thinking instead. If you have always used only your left foot to move it would be senseless to start using only your right foot to move; it's better to use both and then you can walk. So balance is the answer.

Anything we can do to bring the balance in life or in business is a useful action, I believe.

In commenting on both Dr. Taylor's views, as well as Diane Coutu's blogged response to them, one needs to clarify both to oneself and others exactly what the issues are. Probably most crucially is the distinction between a personal belief - let's call it 'faith' - and the results of a scientific investigation, which can be termed knowledge. Almost nobody would have any quarrel with Dr. Taylor's faith in her experiences being real to her, nor with her right to express those beliefs to others. Humans seem to have an innate need for reassurances of the 'oneness' of the Universe and all of us in it (witness the 'Secret' phenomenon for example), and good luck to anybody who is able to make us feel a bit better about our place in a sometimes rather cold and impersonal Universe. Yet when those personal beliefs cross the line into either implied or claimed 'scientific knowledge' is when those like us and many others get somewhat nervous. It is interesting to note that Dr Taylor’s experiences and personal beliefs are documented in a bestselling book subtitled 'A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey', authored by 'Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.' So how is the layperson - and in this case we mean the non-neuroscientist - to take the claims made? Are they the opinion of just one individual (cf. 'The Secret'), or do they have the attached credibility of a Harvard neuroanatomist? What should the thinking businessperson do with this information?

Taking this in hand, the blog asks a bigger question. What role, if any, does the study of the brain have on the study of businesses? In fact, there are now numerous examples in the public domain where the stardust of brain images is sprinkled on hardly-justified claims regarding things like 'the buy button in the brain'. This has of course led to a number of stinging rebukes from eminent neuroscientists of the calibre of Michael Gazzaniga (e.g. HBR February 2006). That said, while we would also urge caution in the application of the brain sciences to the business world at present, we contend that they do have a central role to play in how we understand human behaviour in business. Take for example Professor John Medina’s article ‘The Science of Thinking Smarter’ (HBR May 2008). We agree that ‘it is too early to tell how the revolution in neuroscience is going to affect the way executives run their business’, but it is unarguable that change is already upon us. Indeed, neuroscience is already having an impact on the business world. The 2008 HBR Breakthrough list even featured a brain imaging lie detector. More than that, eminent neuroscientists are directly engaging with the private sector, evidenced by the appointment of Robert Knight, the Director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California at Berkeley, who has become Chief Science Adviser at NeuroFocus, a leader in neuromarketing research.

It is not in question that the wholesale embrace of neuroscience by business will occur eventually. However, organisations must be mindful of the seductive allure of the new approach. Studies have shown that people tend to believe explanations when they are have the phrase ‘brain scans show…’ prefixed to it. This effect causes people to believe the statement merely because they are thinking about the brain scan. However, the technology can only show us that a cortical region is activated for particular task – the machines can’t tell us why. This clearly opens very important questions which we can only touch on here. For example would managers use this seductive allure to bias productivity, and could this lead to unethical management of the work force? Or, as has already caused much controversy in the neuroscience and popular press, will organizations be able to uncover more powerful methods to influence consumers? Ethical issues need to be considered alongside the immense benefit to understanding that organisational cognitive neuroscience can potentially bring.

Given the lucrative potential of pronouncements such as those of Taylor, it is likely that we will continue to see such personal faiths, and anecdotal business advice, couched in the language of the brain sciences. However the thinking businessperson should be very cautious of placing their own faith in such homespun wisdom. Scientific research into the brain has and will continue to tell us wonderful things, yet 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' it is not. When somebody says that they can ‘…step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere, where we are — I am —the life force power of the universe. I’m the life force power of the fifty trillion beautiful molecular genes that make up my form...’ we should all be mindful of the seductive allure of the words – for they are faith not knowledge, and carry no scientific value.

Carl Senior, Nick Lee & Michael Butler
Directors, Organisational Cognitive Neuroscience Centre
www.aston.ac.uk/ocnc
Aston University, UK

Dear friends,

Thank you for your thoughtful commentaries on my blog. I have read and reread them all and I agree with all of you who argue that science cannot provide the answer to all life’s messy questions. As one of my favorite poets, Wallace Stevens, puts it so elegantly:

Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one’s torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

Like many of you, though, I get grumpy when religion poses as science. But let me be absolutely clear: though many scientists are atheists, I don’t believe that religion and science are mutually exclusive. Indeed, I believe that Richard Dawkins goes too far in pitting the two against each other, and in the process he excludes many of the people who should be involved in the debate.

That said, Taylor’s use of neuroscience to discuss her mystical experience is nothing more than hocus-pocus. What caught my imagination, though, is how utterly fascinating her hocus/pocus is!! When I first heard her remarks, I thought to myself, this is something straight out of Ralph Waldo Emerson. For those of you who barely remember Emerson since your schooldays, Emerson is, according to Harold Bloom (probably the leading literary critic in the country), the “most influential of all American writers – surpassing even Walt Whitman and Henry James.” Here’s Bloom in a 2001 HBR interview:

“We begin to read Emerson adequately when we see in him a throwback to those ancient healers who knew they possessed – or were possessed by – a magical self.”

In other words, Taylor and all her magical powers are profoundly anchored in the American tradition. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Americans, a profoundly religious people, should cotton onto neuroscience the way they have. There’s a certain zeal about the whole damn thing that's mystical, and mysticism has a place in all religions.

Just don’t call it science.

Even the neuroscientists – the guys who work in labs day in and day out, conducting all those clinical trials – realize that the public’s understanding of all things neuroscientific is totally out of whack. The June 13th edition of Science magazine has a wonderful article warning us not to be seduced by the brain. Indeed. And let’s not be seduced by Jill Bolte Taylor holding up a brain in her video as a prop for heaven only knows what.

Business needs to be especially cautious of all these neuroscientific advances, because society looks to business to be particularly well grounded in fact (some very interesting books have been written about the catastrophe that occurred once Germany’s major industrial companies abandoned reality in favor of the “idealism” offered by Hitler and his ideologues.). But that’s a whole other story for another day. For now, Carl, Nick and Michael, we’ve already begun to take our conversation off line, so let me postpone our discussion on business here, with an offer to all of you to feel free to write again if the spirit so moves you!

Best regards and thanks for writing in,

Everyone seems to miss the bottom line. The most efficient human mind is one that uses both hemispheres in an almost equal way. This hold true in any situation, and this includes business on any level.

I understand that many people find Taylor's rhetoric or presentation style problematic. (I don't agree, but I understand.) But dismissing the content of her speech because you disapprove of the presentation, or because her father's occupation raises your suspicions, is just as unscientific as accepting the content of her speech because you find the presentation compelling.
An idea couched in seemingly spiritual or religious language can still be scientifically accurate. Imagine, for example, that Einstein had declared that thanks to the brilliance and grace of God, matter and energy are conserved in His universe, with a relationship of E=MC2. Yes, many people would have scoffed at the language but hopefully they would also have considered the content.
I also don't think that there's anything inherently unscientific about suggesting a connection between neurobiology and world peace. World peace, if it ever arrives, will likely be grounded at least in part in empathy: the degree to which people have empathy for others affects their willingness to, say, drop bombs on them. Empathy is a large part of the experience Taylor describes. I think it is widely recognized that empathy has its roots in neurological functioning. There is plenty of research on mirror neurons, autism, and other areas too complicated to get into here that suggests that people are neurologically wired to experience empathy, some to greater degrees than others.
You may think that Taylor has selected the wrong part of the brain (the right hemisphere, versus the left or versus some smaller structure) to emphasize in her theories. For example, maybe you think that empathy originates in a different area of the brain. But that's a question for traditional scientific debate, offering up your evidence versus hers and attempting to show that your theory has stronger evidentiary support -- not a pseudo-debate in which you get to discount her ideas without real assessment simply by applying labels like "religion" and "hocus pocus."
It is true that Taylor is building a large hypothesis out of her own individual experience, which makes her explanations seem overly anecdotal. But it's also the case that in neurobiology, an area where we can't ethically conduct any experiments, scientists are frequently forced to rely on very small pools of data, or even individual experiences, to develop their theories. Think of Phineas Gage, who revolutionized our understanding of the brain through his single, isolated experience.