Unbelievable! ! A woman with half her brain MISSING still managed to live almost a normal life

A Chinese woman has lived to the age of 24 with part of her brain missing, before the extremely rare condition was detected.

Doctors at the Chinese PLA General Hospital of Jinan Military Area Command in the Shandong Province made the discovery when the woman visited medics complaining of nausea and dizziness. 

Scans revealed the woman had been born with a cerebellum - the part of the brain responsible for posture, balance, motor learning like kicking a ball, and speech. 

It is located at the base of the skull and contains around half the neurons - cells that transmit information - in the brain, and represents around 10 per cent of the brain's mass. 
It emerged the woman had experienced problems, not learning to talk until she was six and failing to walk until she was seven.  

While it is not unknown for a person to lose partial function of the cerebellum due to an injury or disease, completely lacking the region in the first place is extremely rare.

Physicians believe the woman is only the ninth known case of a living person suffering the condition cerebellar agenesis. 
Doctors learned the woman had never played or jumped like other children her age, and is unable to walk steadily without support

Tests revealed she had no problem understanding words but living without a cerebellum meant she had difficulties with pronunciation.

Her voice trembles, her words are slurred and the doctors treating the 24-year-old described her voice tone as 'harsh'.

Specialists discovered the space where the cerebellum should be was empty. 

Instead, the black space was filled with cerebrospinal fluid, which cushions the brain, providing defence against disease. 
Doctors treated her with a dehydration treatment to remove some of the water pressure building up in her brain.  

Mario Manto, who researches cerebellar disorders at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium, told the New Scientist: 'These rare cases are interesting to understand how the brain circuitry works and compensates for missing parts.'

The doctors looking after the patient, said they believe the normal cerebellar function may have been taken over by the cortex.  

At a follow-up appointment four years later she was showing signs of doing well, it was reported in the journal Brain. 

The woman married, and gave birth to a daughter with no neurological abnormalities. 

While the majority of people born with the rare condition will die in infancy, the patient represents a new opportunity to study the effects of living without the cerebellum