Read My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey for Free Online

has a concept (meaning) attached to it. It then strings words together in a linear fashion to create sentences and paragraphs capable of conveying very complex messages.
Our right hemisphere complements the action of our left hemisphere language centers by interpreting non-verbal communication. Our right mind evaluates the more subtle cues of language including tone of voice, facial expression, and body language. Our right hemisphere looks at the big picture of communication and assesses the congruity of the overall expression. Any inconsistencies between how someone holds their body, versus their facial expression, versus their tone of voice, versus the message they are communicating, might indicate either a neurological abnormality in how someone expresses himself or it may prove to be a telltale sign that the person is not telling the truth.
People who have damage in their left hemisphere often cannot create or understand speech because the cells in their language centers have been injured. However, they are often genius at being able to determine if someone is telling the truth, thanks to the cells in their right hemisphere. On the other hand, if someone has damage to their right hemisphere, they may not appropriately assess the emotional content of a message. For example, if I am playing blackjack at a party and I say, "hit me!" a person with a damaged right hemisphere may think I am asking him to physically strike me rather than understand that I am simply asking for another card. Without the right hemisphere's ability to evaluate communication in the context of the bigger picture, the left hemisphere tends to interpret everything literally.
Music is another great example of how our two hemispheres complement one another in function. When we methodically and meticulously drill our scales over and over again, when we learn to read the language of staff notation, and when we memorize which fingering on an instrument will create which named note, we are tapping primarily into the skills of our left brain. Our right brain kicks into high gear when we are doing things in the present moment - like performing, improvising or playing by ear.
Did you ever stop to consider how it is that your brain knows how to define the dimensions of your body in space?
    Amazingly, there are cells in our left hemisphere's orientation association area that define the boundaries of our body -where we begin and where we end relative to the space around us. At the same time, there are cells in our right hemisphere's orientation association area that orient our body in space. As a result, our left hemisphere teaches us where our body begins and ends, and our right hemisphere helps us place it where we want it to go. 3
    I enthusiastically encourage you to explore the myriad of current literature about teaching and the brain, learning and the brain, and the asymmetries of our two cortical hemispheres. I believe that the more we understand about how our hemispheres work together to create our perception of reality, then the more successful we will be in understanding the natural gifts of our own brains, as well as more effectively help people recover from neurological trauma.
    The type of stroke I experienced was a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of my brain due to an undiagnosed AVM. On the morning of the stroke, this massive hemorrhage rendered me so completely disabled that I describe myself as an infant in a woman's body. Two and a half weeks after the stroke, I underwent major surgery to remove a golf ball-sized blood clot that was obstructing my brain's ability to transmit information.
    Following surgery, it took eight years for me to completely recover all physical and mental functions. I believe I have recovered completely because I had an advantage. As a trained neuroanatomist, I believed in the plasticity of my brain - its ability to repair, replace, and retrain its neural circuitry. In addition, thanks to my academics, I had a