In a report published in the scientific journal Brain, Feng Yu and his colleagues at a military hospital in Shangdong province, China, say that the woman is married and has a daughter. She has felt slightly dizzy when walking right from childhood and her speech is slightly slurred. Otherwise she leads a normal life.
She came to the hospital complaining of nausea and vomiting for a month. CT and MRI scans revealed that there was no cerebellum. Where the cerebellum should have been there was just a hole filled with the whitish cerebro-spinal fluid that bathes the whole brain. The lack of any remnants showed that the woman had never developed a cerebellum, a condition described as cerebellar agenesis.
The cerebellum (Latin for ‘little brain’) is located at the base of the brain just above where the vertebral column meets the skull. It controls key human attributes like precision and coordination of motor functions. It also controls language abilities.
According to the researchers, this appears to be a novel and perhaps first of its kind case. Usually, infants or children are found to have a missing cerebellum and they have severe disabilities.
