Missing Pieces

This article talks about the adaptability of the brain. One woman was discovered to be missing her entire cerebellum, the part of the brain that represents only 10% of the brain's volume but 50% of its neurons. Located below the two hemispheres, the cerebellum main job is to control voluntary movements and balance, and helps in our learning of those as well. When looking at the woman’s history, it’s clear that she has the signs of missing her cerebellum; she started walking until she was 7 and had trouble communicating clearly until she was 6. However, the fact that she can communicate at all demonstrates the great adaptability of the brain to compensate for missing pieces and how even people who are missing parts of their brain can still live a relatively normal life.

What if...?
You were missing the "pons" part of your brain. The pons contains nuclei that relay signals from the forebrain to the cerebellum. It also works with sleep, respiration, swallowing, bladder control, hearing, taste and other functions. Without the pons, it would be unlikely that the brain could function properly because of the lack of a signal relay to pass along the messages from one area of the brain to another. One disease associated with the pons area is central pontine myelinolysis (CPM) that causes damage to the myelin sheaths of the neurons of the pons. It can cause acute paralysis, difficulty swallowing, balancing, walking, and other activities that many of us take for granted. If left undiagnosed, it can lead to "locked-in" syndrome, where the patient is aware but cannot move or communicate because of paralysis of all voluntary muscles except the eyes. These diseases/dysfunctions help show the importance of the pons and its necessity in the brain.