Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

The emotional system of the right hemisphere, this is a right here, right now machine.

Right here, right now.

That's all it has.

Doesn't have the past, doesn't have the future, doesn't know who you are.

Well, it has anxiety, but most of that is going to be based in the left hemisphere.

Because this machine, the left hemisphere, has linearity across time.

So this emotional system is remembering every traumatic event that ever happened to you that you don't want to have happen again.

Trauma's living in there, as is addiction.

Addiction, there's a group of cells in here called the insular cortex, and that's where craving is.

And that's part of the limbic system of the left hemisphere.

And if you wipe out craving, do you still have an addiction?

So let me just keep going.

So we have these two emotional systems, and then we have these two thinking systems.

And the thinking system is what distinguished us as humans from all of their mammals.

So our mammals, our dogs love us.

There ain't any question about that.

Our dogs can punish us when we're not very, you know, we don't show up and we've sent them to doggy care if they're not happy about that.

So mammals have other forms, but we have this higher executive functioning.

And in the right hemisphere, it's right here, right now.

And in the left hemisphere, it's all about me.