A little post for cerebellar stroke survivors, what you might not know about the unique aftereffects of this particular kind of stroke. The cerebellum works in mysterious ways, it’s a fairly unexplored region of the brain parts in total, but yet has the upper house in neurone representatives. I wasn’t aware of this until recently, but the cerebellum hemispheres align themselves directly to the corresponding body areas, so the left cerebellum hemisphere communicates with the left side of the body and the right to the right. That’s easy isn’t isn’t it … except … the right cerebellum communicates with the left cerebral hemisphere which in turn communicates to the right side of the body, and the left cerebellar hemisphere communicates with the right cerebral hemisphere which communicates to the left side of the body. Did I say easy? My mistake.
What I would like to discuss here is the consequences of cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome, otherwise known as Schmahmann’s syndrome. From what I have researched it is a common ground for people who experience bipolar, ADHD, depression, schizophrenia, Down syndrome and a whole other world of brain challenges. Recently, I was diagnosed with BPD. They think it was a result of the damage to my cerebellum. The cerebellum plays a vital role as modulator in brain activity. I have mentioned before in previous posts, that the cerebellum appears to be like an equaliser, it attunes the rest of the brain. I see it, unscientifically, as the lizard brain trying to rationalise the productivity of the mammalian brain. There are a whole lot of conversations, some of them quite amusing, that could be expressed by such a dichotomy. There are also a lot of serious ones, of which we all know about but can be left for another post. What neurologists have found is a common thread between the psychological disturbances of many disorders and syndromes, and our little friend, the cerebellum.
The cerebellum is not just a fine tuner of motor function but it also is a fine tuner of cognitive and emotional states. In fact, it fine tunes function of emotions and reality. Where does this leave us? Those of us who have un-benefited from this type of injury, do we have paddles? To make matters more complicated, the left side of the cerebellum that communicates with the right side of the cerebral cortex is communicating with a side of the cerebrum less understood. To add insult to injury, to coin a phrase, very little research has gone into rehabilitating cerebellar stroke. So, every cerebellar stroke survivor is opening up new pathways for research. Pioneers is the word that comes to mind, a challenged mind, mind you.
