
Woman of 24 found to have no cerebellum in her brain - shahmeern
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329861.900-woman-of-24-found-to-have-no-cerebellum-in-her-brain.html#.VBHaCWRdURl
======
blennon
This condition is known as cerebellar agenesis. A review of many of the case
studies was done by a prominent cerebellum researcher [1]. Typically the
individuals that survive past birth live relatively normal lives but with
impaired motor skills which are slower to develop. Their abilities are
remarkable given that acute lesions to the cerebellum result in much more
significant impairments (e.g. not being able to touch your nose with the tip
of your finger in one smooth, coordinated movement).

These individuals probably also exhibit diminished cognitive function as well.
Only recently has it been recognized that the cerebellum is also involved in
cognition [2]. It's interesting to note that you don't need a cerebellum to
move or think, but the loss of it impairs both. Contrast this to damage to
your motor cortex which can result in paralysis.

[1] Glickstein, M (1994). Cerebellar Agenesis. Brain, 117, 1209-1212. [2]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23996631](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23996631)

~~~
skj
> This condition is known as cerebellar agenesis.

To tease you a little bit, I read this as

> This condition is known as being born without a cerebellum.

I don't know why we need a latin name for everything!

~~~
wlesieutre
It certainly makes it easier to find in a book or via search. You have one
word for what it's called, instead of having some under "Born without a
cerebellum," some as "Missing cerebellum," others in "No cerebellum,"
"Undeveloped cerebellum," etc.

Plus it's more convenient to say. Not a big deal for us, but to people who
deal with crazy medical conditions all day long, describing each one in
natural language would be imprecise and time consuming.

~~~
geoelectric
Though obviously it's not the reason it was adopted, it is kind of neat that
using a dead language for scientific terms disambiguates them cleanly for the
purposes of searching.

Any live language would have accidental matches (even quoted) where it's just
the obvious thing to say, a la "born without a cerebellum".

~~~
jkdsfhkssfhjk
not a dead language.. greek language is still alive and indeed it sounds like
"born without a cerebellum" (but to be fair the syntax reminds of medical
term)

~~~
zarriak
Latin is a dead language, there has not been a native speaker for a very long
time[1].

[1]:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death)

~~~
lotsofmangos
It is still in constant use as the official language of the Vatican.

They keep having to invent new Latin words and phrases so they can discuss
things like hotpants, which are _brevíssimae bracae femíneae_ apparently.

Have a look here - [http://usvsth3m.com/post/95991771713/hotpants-flirt-and-
othe...](http://usvsth3m.com/post/95991771713/hotpants-flirt-and-other-new-
latin-words-invented)

The cashpoint with Latin in comic-sans is awesome.

edit - translating from the latin, comic-sans is a pretty accurate font name.

------
karpathy
This also reminds me of Hemispherectomy[0] where an entire half of the brain
is surgically removed in extreme cases to prevent seizures. And amazingly,
especially if you do this on younger children:

"Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality,
or humor,[4] and minimal changes in cognitive function overall."

If you don't _really_ need half of the brain and you don't _really_ need the
cerebellum, I wonder how little (and what part) of the brain we actually do
_really_ need. And then there are so many people living just fine with lesions
in so many parts of the brain.

It's just amazing. Imagine going into our code bases and tearing out entire
classes or modules; That wouldn't go down well.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy)

~~~
lostlogin
>> It's just amazing. Imagine going into our code bases and tearing out entire
classes or modules; That wouldn't go down well.<< It's probably more like
removing half the CPU cores and your clever code being ok with this.

~~~
Pxtl
Thinking of the brain as a computing platform is never a good metaphor. Neural
networks do not have a rigid delineation between instruction-storage, data-
storage, and CPU. Every neuron wears all three hats and intertwingles those
concepts.

~~~
LesZedCB
Von Neumann architecture isn't the only form of computation that exists.

~~~
lutusp
True. If it were, what humans do with their biological CPUs would be
impossible. Too bad we don't understand our own brains.

~~~
ivanca
In our defense, they didn't grow to be understood but to serve its purpose. So
it's akin to a code base with billions of years in the making, without any
good documentation.

------
smtddr
I love how these kinds of discoveries challenge, if not out right shatter, our
current scientific understanding of human beings.

Again, I recommend Gattaca movie
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/)

Don't let medical science try to dictate your potential based on gender, race
or anything about your DNA. They're only right until they find out they're
wrong.

~~~
maxcan
"Don't let mainstream misinterpretations and gross oversimplifications of
medical science try to dictate your potential based on gender, race or
anything about your DNA. They're only right until they find out they're
wrong."

FTFY.

Most of the issues you're alluding to are not because medical science says
something is impossible but because the media hears "X group has slightly
elevated probability of Y" and reports it as "X group has Y".

~~~
catshirt
the original comment was articulated just fine. the point is that science of
all varieties has proven wrong over, and over, and over, and over, and over.
science is a constant reevaluation of things we "know".

thing is, we don't know what we don't know.

------
e0m
Wow, could you imagine building a computer so resilient that it still works
after a part equivalently important disappeared‽

~~~
C--
Not really a computer but some distributed systems already work that way. I've
read somewhere that Netflix (might have been Amazon?) is designed in such a
way that it's capable of satisfying certain requirements even when services
are down.

~~~
scrollaway
Are we talking about a "fallback db servers take over when the main ones
drop", or "static assets server morphs into temporary db server if the main
one drops"? Because there is a massive difference.

~~~
Dylan16807
There are crazy cases of plasticity like that, this is more of "massive nosql
caching infrastructure is down, everything else works overdrive to still
mostly function correctly".

~~~
scrollaway
So when your legs stop working and you start crawling around the floor with
your hands pulling the rest of your body, is that plasticity too?

It's easy to continue working at increased costs when you don't have a cache.
That's.. that's what a cache is for; it's not critical to the infrastructure,
it's here to reduce the costs.

Not to rain on any parade of course, I'm just pointing out I'd like to see
more cases of _actual_ plasticity of an email server that puts all jobs on
hold while it temporarily takes over for a database server that just stopped
responding.

~~~
evincarofautumn
Caching can be critical if the volume is high enough. There are physical
limitations of computing appliances that make sites like Google or Facebook
actually impossible to run without extensive caching and indexing layers, not
just prohibitively expensive.

~~~
scrollaway
I thought that was obvious. OP was making a point about things running without
cache at the cost of increased load... I'm sure Google Search couldn't
reliably achieve that right now, but we were not talking about Google Search.

~~~
evincarofautumn
Right. I figured I wasn’t telling you anything new, but thought it worth
making explicit for the benefit of others.

------
jrkelly
The robustness of evolved systems is just crazy.

~~~
kolev
If only we had this in the much simpler than a brain computer systems, right?

~~~
adamio
Yea try booting up with half a CPU.

~~~
crimsonalucard
it can be done! You can disable cores!

~~~
rikacomet
well not everyone knows how to do that. And perhaps similarly.. not every
brain knows how to switch of the cerebellum.

------
blisterpeanuts
This is fascinating because the cerebellum is part of the "reptilian brain",
one of the three sections of the mammalian triune brain that include the
limbic and neocortex as well.

The reptilian brain is responsible for basic motor functions, heart rate,
temperature regulation, and balance, and evolutionarily seems to be the part
of the brain that is most connected to that of ancient fish and reptiles, as
the name implies.

A person who is missing a portion of this rigid subsystem should still be able
to think, process new information, and remember it, but might suffer from
imbalance and other basic health issues as in fact this woman does. Yet, she
can do lots of stuff. Apparently the surviving portions of her reptilian brain
are able to compensate for the loss of the cerebellum.

It sheds a whole new light on a phrase like "my cold reptilian hindbrain tells
me to ruthlessly proceed". We think of ourselves having this sort of
emotionless hindbrain that is moderated by the more modern brain centers for
sympathy, empathy, emotion, and higher reasoning. But what if in fact there is
no such thing as a ruthless, primitive hindbrain and we are all completely in
charge of our behavior, ethically and emotionally speaking?

[http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_05/d_05_cr/d_05_cr_her/d...](http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_05/d_05_cr/d_05_cr_her/d_05_cr_her.html)

~~~
sitkack
Maybe it isn't that the cerebellum is "gone" but maybe the surrounding tissue
that bordered the cerebellum has sort of involuntarily taken over the same
function. Those nerve endings that would terminate in the cerebellum are
probably still intact?

------
otoburb
>"[...] the woman joins an elite club of just nine people who are known to
have lived without their entire cerebellum. A detailed description of how the
disorder affects a living adult is almost non-existent, say doctors from the
Chinese hospital, because most people with the condition die at a young age
and the problem is only discovered on autopsy."

Is this woman the only one of the nine to have lived this long? Incredible
given how critical the cerebellum is.

~~~
zequel
Well autopsies are rare so it's an unknown number of survivors.

~~~
gwern
I would think that people who die very young, like kids, would get autopsied
all the time, simply because such deaths are rare and there would be suspicion
of foul play or other issues.

------
mrb
This is fascinating considering that the cerebellum contains _more neurons
than the rest of the brain_ (!) (source:
[http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s3/chapter05.html](http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s3/chapter05.html)).
I wonder what other problems she experiences (the article only says she
started speaking and walking at age 6-7).

~~~
thanatropism
The cerebellum is a much more primitive neural network, though. It's feed-
forward only - it actually looks like a tree in MRIs - so it's a lot harder to
encode anything. Normal neural networks ("connectomes") in the brain are
massively interconnected in all directions, which allows for parallel
computation; with the tree-like, feed-forward-only architecture of the
cerebellum, neurons from different "branches" don't communicate.

~~~
pionar
Interesting. How was it determined that they're feed-forward-only? Can signals
not travel back down the "tree"? (Note, I'm not even an amateur neurologist).

~~~
thanatropism
It's a different kind of neuron altogether.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_cell)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebellum_granule_cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebellum_granule_cell)

------
lizzard
I hope she knows all the lyrics to The Ramones' "Teenage Lobotomy".

"Then I guess I'll have to tell 'em / That I've got no cerebellum."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ssoBUb2cJk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ssoBUb2cJk)

~~~
shanev
I was just going to post this! First thing I thought of.

------
vhost-
The brain knows how to survive, that's for sure...
[http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/12/woman.brain/index.html?...](http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/12/woman.brain/index.html?iref=24hours)

------
lostlogin
The upper image which I assume is her MRI scan is interesting. It isn't just
her cerebellum missing - her brain stem looks odd too. Where is the pons?
Where are the cranial nerves attaching? Need more images! Edit. On closer
reading this article isn't great. <<Doctors did a CAT scan and immediately
identified the source of the problem – her entire cerebellum was missing (see
scan, below left)>>. Assuming it isn't some sort of problem related to me
viewing the article on a phone, that image is an MR. No CATs involved.

~~~
timle
? The top image is most definitely from a CAT scan. If it was MR, there would
be way more artifact around the eye/nose/throat.

~~~
lostlogin
No it isn't. Look at the contrast and the signal from fat and water, look at
the tongue. That is a T1 sag. Edit: Article, or images anyway, appear on
multiple sites labeled as MRI. Pretty sure the fuzzy writing says T1 FLAIR on
this site. [http://io9.com/doctors-discover-a-woman-with-no-
cerebellum-1...](http://io9.com/doctors-discover-a-woman-with-no-
cerebellum-1633439918) Edit 2: Here is another link and the ax T2 is seen at
bottom of the images. Edit 3. The actual journal article. New scientist
screwed up didn't didn't read it properly. Patient had a CT then an MRI as per
the image label. New Scientist only kept the MRI image as brain MR is way
nicer than CT but kept the journal text saying CT.
[http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/22/bra...](http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/22/brain.awu239.full)

------
Osmium
> Her doctors describe these effects as "less than would be expected"

Understatement of the century? I wonder, then, what parts of the brain (if
any) truly are essential for conscious thought?

~~~
josu
The main role of the cerebellum is the motor function. According to the
wikipedia it's still unclear if it plays a part in some cognitive functions
such as attention and language, and in regulating fear and pleasure response

------
rmc
Remember things like this when people talk about biological differences
between men and women's brains. Studies sometimes find tiny differences, and
then some people claim that's why 19 out of 20 board members are men. It's not
bias, it's science!

But if people can live missing massive chunks of their brain, is it _really_
believable that tiny differences can cause such massive societal outcomes?

~~~
gwern
> But if people can live missing massive chunks of their brain, is it really
> believable that tiny differences can cause such massive societal outcomes?

Congratulations, you are today's demonstration of 'proving too much': you have
also just proven that things like lesions and scars cannot affect cognition,
warp personalities, create agnosias and aphasias, and result in bizarre
conditions like those Oliver Sacks has so memorably documented, because
lesions're so tiny and such small parts of the brain - 'if people can live
missing massive chunks of their brain, is it _really_ believable that tiny
differences can cause such massive societal outcomes?'

~~~
caseydurfee
The OP was not talking about the magnitude of the differences, but the nature
of them.

Do you believe that neuroplasticity remains constant throughout a person's
lifetime? Unless you believe that, your statement is incoherent.

Lesions and scars are acute changes in the brain that happen after birth.
That's different from starting out missing massive chunk of your brain.

OP: "Look at that person who was born with no arms due to a birth defect.
They're able to live a fairly normal, happy life. Maybe arms aren't essential
to human happiness."

You: "So you're saying if you got your hand mutilated in a garbage disposal,
that wouldn't make you unhappy? A hand is much less than a whole arm."

(I'll leave what this makes you a demonstration of as an exercise for the
reader.)

~~~
gwern
> The OP was not talking about the magnitude of the differences, but the
> nature of them.

And what, pray tell, are the 'nature' of disorders like Cotard's syndrome?

> OP: "Look at that person who was born with no arms due to a birth defect.
> They're able to live a fairly normal, happy life. Maybe arms aren't
> essential to human happiness."

Try going back and reading what was said. Your paraphrase is incorrect. Here's
a correct paraphrase:

"OP: look at that person born with no legs. They're able to lead a somewhat
normal life. This shows that anyone claiming that there might be differences
between the fingered and the fingerless such as in fine motor control is a
moron - because a leg is so much larger than a finger!"

> I'll leave what this makes you a demonstration of as an exercise for the
> reader.

Well, it demonstrates you can't paraphrase or follow the logical structure of
an argument. I'm not sure what I'm demonstrating; hopefully something good.

------
timle
I have always found it fascinating that the cerebellum has more neurons than
the rest of the brain. What the heck is going on in there.

------
lostlogin
Better article and original source.
[http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/22/bra...](http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/22/brain.awu239.full)

------
z3t4
A friend of mine lost the left side of his brain ... And he's all right now!

------
mmcclellan
I'm being sincere here. I am surprised and excited to see interest in this.
Someone very close to me has no discernible cerebellum and no one we've seen
or known has ever considered it medically interesting.

~~~
sehutson
I felt the same way when I saw this article. My cousin's daughter was recently
diagnosed with cerebellar hypoplasia (a missing or smaller than normal
cerebellum), and it's been pretty terrifying for them. They live in a rural
area where no one has ever dealt with the problem, and they're spending insane
amounts of time and money on therapy (in a city an hour away) to help her
learn basic skills. She celebrated her 3rd birthday this week and she can't
walk, talk, or even stand unassisted.

On one hand, this article thrills me to think that at some point, her daughter
might lead a relatively normal life. It's heartbreaking to see the way she
suffers right now - like there's more going on in her head than she can tell
us, and you can see the frustration on her face when she tries to do things or
get her point across. On the other hand, I'm hesitant to send the article to
my cousin because I know everything related to her daughter's problem is
deeply depressing to her as she's dealing with a frustrated child who makes
very little progress from day to day.

------
sramsay
"Don't mind the gap . . ."

Perhaps a more tasteful lead-in was in order.

------
2xlbuds
I'm really curious, how would this woman react to alcohol?

------
toblender
Talk about living on "Hard" mode.

------
clueless123
That is nothing... I know of several politicians that have no brain at all,
and no one has noticed yet. jk,jk

------
josu
Is the picture of the CT scan real or just an illustration? Because I would
assume that even if the woman doesn't have a cerebellum the brain should
expand to occupy that space.

~~~
johnjhayes
The article indicates it's the actual scan and says the space "was filled with
cerebrospinal fluid, which cushions the brain and provides defence against
disease."

~~~
lostlogin
Don't read the article provided too carefully. The image isn't a CT and has
been dumbed down from the source. The image is an MR not a CT, and the image
below is some sort of made up composite image. Original source with proper
images:
[http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/22/bra...](http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/22/brain.awu239.full)

------
fiatjaf
It's strange how materialists of all sorts (just look at the comments) take it
for granted that, no matter how scientifically absurd, these facts cannot be
used as evidence for non-materialistic explanations of the life and the world.
Everything will be explained by materialistic science, and that is settled.

~~~
lutusp
Okay, but consider the alternative -- that the existence of a non-
materialistic reality is assumed without empirical (i.e. material) evidence.
If that were to be accepted as a given, then we might build a pseudoscience on
that foundation, one that would burden everyone with assumptions about
empirically untestable, non-objective properties of reality. We would have
created psychology.

~~~
acornax
Empirical evidence isn't material evidence.

~~~
lutusp
That's exactly what it is.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_evidence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_evidence)

Quote: "Empirical evidence (also empirical data, sense experience, empirical
knowledge, or the a posteriori) is a source of knowledge acquired by means of
observation or experimentation.[1] The term comes from the Greek word for
experience, Εμπειρία (empeiría)."

The definition goes on to contrast empirical evidence with reasoning and other
ways of approaching analysis -- all the non-materialist approaches.

~~~
acornax
Read the quote again, you're begging the question.

Empirical evidence is experiential by definition - it can be material evidence
if it relates to claims about matter, but it can also be evidence about other
domains.

Ex. If God exists, then religious experience is empirical evidence of this. It
is not probably not material evidence however.

~~~
lutusp
> Read the quote again, you're begging the question.

Yes, perhaps I am to some extent.

> Empirical evidence is experiential by definition

I would have said it relies on tangible evidence, material evidence. Its
status as an experience by an observer, if present, is secondary. I say this
because evidence can be gathered without anyone experiencing it directly.
Consider Curiosity on Mars. If we read a mass spectrometer's results radioed
back to Earth and draw conclusions on that basis, it's a stretch to assert
that we've experienced the evidence. Its interpretation certainly involves an
observer, but not the evidence gathering itself -- that is often automated,
even here on earth.

> Ex. If God exists, then religious experience is empirical evidence of this.

No, I think a spiritual experience contradicts the direct, physical sense of
empirical. I usually regard empirical evidence as that kind of physical
evidence that forces different, similarly equipped observers into agreement on
its meaning.

Example -- when the CMB was confirmed in the mid-1960s, it killed off the last
hope for a steady-state universe. Until then the Big Bang's critics were
theorizing that the universe created new matter between the galaxies, so even
though the universe was clearly expanding, this didn't mean it had a beginning
or an end. The CMB detection, which wasn't really anyone's direct experience,
falsified this alternative to the Big Bang. And it's objective in the sense
that anyone can set up and detect the same evidence using indirect means --
not by direct experience.

~~~
Natsu
Where would that leave something like free will?

I think most people will agree with me that we have the sensation of control
over our own actions and yet it's not something that's directly testable per
se.

~~~
lutusp
Because the notion of free will isn't a materially testable question, it's not
in the realm of science but philosophy.

