The number of people in the world who have been found to have no cerebellum so far is only 9, and the lives of people without a cerebellum show some unusual differences compared to healthy people.
What changes occur in our body when the cerebellum, which we know is generally responsible for the balance mechanism, but has many more roles in our body, is absent?
People who lack the existence of this organ have provided the scientific world with a unique insight into the function of the cerebellum and what it would be like to live without it.
Doctors say that there is no comprehensive explanation for how this condition affects that person, as it is a rare case that a part of the brain is missing or lost, whether through various surgeries or congenital.
Because most people without a cerebellum died at a young age, and until now this ailment had only been detected at autopsy after death.
The cerebellum, as we are all familiar with, helps us to be controlled and balanced in our daily life as well as coordinating our movements.
The motor cortex in our brain tells the desired region of our body to move, and the cerebellum plays a role in the correct occurrence of this movement.
In short, the cerebellum, which has a very important function from the bending of the finger to the movement of the leg, in a way has a main task in organizing every movement that it is responsible for. It is possible to live without the cerebellum, but not having this organ makes life a bit difficult in certain matters.
Boston resident Jonathan Keleher, now in his late 30s, is just one person living without a cerebellum.
In his infancy, Jonathan was unable to perform basic skills such as sitting, walking, and running that a baby should be able to do on his own when he reaches a certain level of development. Suspicious of this situation, his family began to take their son to many doctors. Finally, when he was 5 years old, a brain scan revealed what went wrong.
Jonathan was born without a cerebellum, and there was a black hole where his cerebellum should have been.
After this situation was definitively identified, researchers and doctors took action and followed Jonathan closely to study his progress.
According to the researchers, people who do not have a cerebellum have some defects in fine motor skills, most generally. Although they can usually walk with the need of a cane or any kind of support, their writing and speaking skills show various weaknesses.
Their handwriting is often somewhat garbled, and their speech is somewhat imperfect, if not incomprehensible.
People without a cerebellum have difficulty reacting to social stimuli and are unable to drive or bike. Jonathan’s life also progresses with these setbacks, and the way he speaks and takes notes differs from that of a healthy person.
This affects Jonathan’s emotional coordination as well as his motor skills.
People who do not have a cerebellum cannot establish deep relationships with the people around them, as healthy people do with their families or close circles, and these people have difficulty expressing their feelings. Their emotional awareness is unusual and the way they show their emotions is quite inadequate for the people around them.
A young Chinese woman, who did not begin to speak clearly until the age of 6 and could not walk until the age of 7, learned that she did not have a cerebellum at the age of 24 and was referred to as “the woman with a hole in her brain”.
The woman, who went to the doctor with complaints of nausea and dizziness and was examined in the light of these ailments, was found by doctors in 2014 that she did not have a cerebellum and that the area was filled with cerebrospinal fluid instead of this organ.
While people who lack the presence of the cerebellum may have various mental and movement disorders, epilepsy and a fatal accumulation of fluid in the brain, this deficiency in the Chinese woman, like Jonathan, caused moderate motor disability and problems with pronunciation during speech.
Doctors described the missing cerebellum as other parts of the brain taking over and what caused the cerebellum to disappear was actually the brain’s “adaptation to the situation.”
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