IO9, Robbie Gonzalez, Sep 11, 2014
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| An MRI of the woman's head reveals "no recognizable cerebellar structure." The posterior fossa, write the researchers, is filled instead by cerebrospinal fluid | Image Credit: Feng Yu et al. |
A
24-year-old woman complaining of dizziness and nausea was admitted to a
hospital in Shandong Province recently, where she told doctors she had
struggled with balance all her life. When doctors performed a brain scan, they
immediately noticed the problem: The woman was missing her cerebellum.
The
cerebellum, which is Latin for "little brain," is a small lump of
brain matter situated below and toward the rear of the brain's two cerebral
hemispheres. So densely packed are its neurons, that despite accounting for
just 10% of the brain's volume, the cerebellum manages to cram in more than
half of the brain's total neurons. To go about one's life without a cerebellum,
it should go without saying, is far from common; in the August 22 issue of Brain, doctors led by neurosurgeon Feng Yu report the woman is one of just nine
people known to have done so. That Yu's team documented her condition while she
was alive makes the discovery all the more exceptional.
The woman's
case presents a fascinating example of neuroplasticity, the process by which
one or more regions of the brain adapt to compensate for damage to a different
area of the brain, or a loss of some bodily function. If you lose a finger, for
example, the neural representations of the neighboring fingers get bigger.
Sever someone's optic nerve, and the neurons devoted to vision will be co-opted
by neurons associated with other cognitive functions. This is one reason blind
people tend to have excellent audio acuity.
In this
woman's case, however, the missing body part is not a finger, nor an optic
nerve, but a sizable chunk of the brain, itself. The cerebellum plays an
important role in motor control. Timing, coordination, fine movement – all of
these things rely in large part on this small, sub-hemispheric brain. Yu's team
calls the woman's condition a rare example of complete primary cerebellar
agenesis. "This surprising phenomenon," the authors write,
"supports the concept of extracerebellar motor system plasticity,
especially cerebellum loss, occurring early in life."
According to Mitchell Glickstein, emeritus professor of neuroscience at University
College London, "the claim that people with complete cerebellar agenesis
can be entirely symptom free is widespread," and kept alive by an
"oral tradition [that] people who are born without a cerebellum may have
no observable symptoms at all." In fact, he says, every documented case of
the condition has been linked to "a profound deficit in the development of
normal movement." This certainly appears to be the case with this
24-year-old woman, whose mother reports she was four years old before she could
stand on her own, and seven before she could walk unassisted, "with a
persistently unsteady gait." Her
speech was also reportedly unintelligible until the age of 6 (difficulty
articulating is a symptom of cerebellar disfunction). [Pictured Here:
"Human Brain Without Cerebellum," on display in the Anatomy
Department of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK | Via Glickstein]
Today,
however, the 24-year-old woman's symptoms are not characterized as
debilitating, but as "mild to moderate" – her movements
"slowed," or "slightly irregular." Yu's team notes that she
is married with a daughter, and describe her pregnancy and delivery as
"uneventful." The authors describe her neurological exam in detail:
A
neurological examination revealed she could cooperate and fully orientate. A
verbal analysis test revealed her word comprehension and expression remained
intact and she had no sign of aphasia, but mild to moderate signs of cerebellar
dysarthria. The patient has mild voice tremor with slurred pronunciation and
her voice quality is slightly harsh. Cerebellar ataxia including Romberg's
sign, and there is evidence of heel-knee-tibia impairment. The patient
experienced mild to moderate dysmetria in reaching the nose when administered
the finger-to-nose test. Pronation-supination alternating movements were
slightly irregular and slowed. While she is able to walk unsteadily without
support, her gait is moderately unsteady. The patient has evidence of tandem
gait and moderately reduced gait speed. There is no focal paresis but the
muscle tone is mildly increased. Evaluation of the sensory system showed no
abnormalities, no deformities of the fingers and toes were observed, and her
complete blood count and urinalysis were normal.
Sometimes
brain activities associated with a certain area are redistributed to other
locations not following an injury, but in response to the area never having
formed at all. Read more about this rare case study in the latest issue of Brain. See also: Helen Thomson's coverage of the study in New Scientist.
Related Article:
"... The Second Brain
Innate does
so many things for you! Some of you are starting to get a bigger picture of
where I'm going with this discussion. Here is a concept that we've not really
broached before. We're going to give it a name, but please do not misunderstand
it. You only have one word for your intelligent control center, and the word is
called brain. So we are going to give you a concept that the innate is your
second brain. It doesn't function like your first one at all, but it is smart
and it is intelligent and it knows what you need. Sometimes it can even replace
a function that your logical brain normally does.
Let me show
you what I mean. Here is a puzzle, a conundrum of medicine: When an accident
happens that severs your spinal cord completely, it leaves you with no feeling
or muscle function from the waist down. This is because the signals from the
brain to your muscles are no longer able to be sent. The pathway for those
signals is severed. You then spend the rest of your life in a chair, perhaps
even being fed by others. But the puzzle it that there are some things within
you that continue to function anyway. One of them is your heart. Another is
digestion. Many of these things continue to work even though you are told that
your brain, the central nervous system, the organ that sends all the signals to
make things work, had its signals severed. The conduit where the signals are
sent within the spine is broken. So what keeps all these organs below the neck
going?
Your heart
depends upon signals from the brain to function. It needs the electrical pulses
sent from specific parts of the brain, creating a synchronized rhythm in order
for the heart to beat. Yet the brain is disconnected and the heart keeps its
rhythm. How can that work? Now I'll tell you: The innate takes over and
continues the signal. It's always there, for the Merkabah is body-wide, not
centralized in one place as your brain is. The organs will continue to
function, but the pathway to the muscles are gone. Even reproduction can still
happen! The heart keeps going and digestion continues, and all without connection
to the brain.
Innate is
smart! It's a second brain. Medical science is often puzzled over this, and I
just gave you the answer. So innate is the intelligence in your body that is
smarter about cellular things than your brain. Now I want to wrap this all up.
What are you
supposed to do with all this information? I want you to get in touch with
innate. It's the heart connection, dear ones. The Higher-Self, innate and Human
consciousness are the three Human energies that need to meld - Human
consciousness, Higher-Self and innate.
When DNA
starts to work at a higher efficiency, there are bridges that start to be built
between these things. You'll start to feel them when you recognize and sense
truth. When you start to have discernment and cognize things for what they are,
you stop looking around for answers. You are far more self-contained, and your
answers are often the same as those around you who have the same discernment
engine. All this now comes from within, instead of an outside source.
Many will
tell you this is all nonsense. They tell you about God and ask you to believe
them. They tell you that you were born dirty, or that there are societies
trying to control you, or that everywhere you look there's a conspiracy against
you. They generate fear, and the result is Human fear, confusion, separation
and even war.
The Smart Innate
What if you
could start understanding the truth from the innate within? You would
understand that you are a piece of God on this planet, and you can discern what
is and what is not happening around you. The Human Being becomes smarter when
the two brains come together and you're able then to see your own health
situation, to catch things before they get out of hand, and even to sense the
truth of God within the beautiful system of your Akash. ..."
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