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FALLS CHURCH, Virginia (CNN) :
The right side of Michelle Mack's brain rewired itself to take over functions controlled by the left.
Born with only half a brain, Mack can speak normally, graduated from high school and has an uncanny knack for dates.
At 27, doctors determined that the right side of her brain had essentially rewired itself to make up for function that was likely lost during pre-birth stroke.
But her childhood and young adult years were fraught with frustration.
"It was very hard for me," Mack said. "It was very hard for me growing up. No one knew the truth about my brain."
Mack's parents, Carol and Wally, realized shortly after her birth that something was wrong.
"There wasn't a group to turn to," said Carol Mack. "Michelle didn't have cerebral palsy, I knew that.
She didn't have Down's syndrome, I knew that. I had no place to turn."
Ten years ago, Dr. Jordan Grafman, chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Section at the National Institutes of Health, finally diagnosed the problem
An MRI scan revealed she
was missing nearly half of the left side of her brain. While it was clear Mack has some problems, Grafman said he and the family were shocked by the extent of the damage.
"We were surprised to see the extent of the lesion in her brain, which basically took away the left side of her brain," said Grafman.
"There's some very deep structures remaining, but the surface of her brain, the cortex is 95 percent gone and some of the deeper structures, structures that control movement, are missing.
These are all structures that are important for movement, behavior, cognition."
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The only answer, Grafman said, was that Mack's brain has rewired itself.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
