A 37 year-old woman, Michelle Mack, who was born without half a brain, is able to speak normally, has a great memory when it comes to dates and successfully finished high school.”It was very hard for me,” Michelle said. “It was very hard for me growing up. No one knew the truth about my brain.”

Although Michelle’s parents knew something was wrong with their daughter, the problem was only diagnosed ten years ago. Doctors were shocked to discover that nearly the entire left side of Michelle’s brain was missing and determined the right side of her brain had essentially rewired itself to make up for function.

“Michelle has fairly normal language abilities, certainly basic language abilities, she can construct a sentence, she can understand instructions, she can find words when she’s talking, but actually she has some trouble in some aspects of visual-spatial processing,” said Dr. Jordan Grafman, chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Section at the National Institutes of Health.

“It’s quite possible that in her learning, in her development, when the right hemisphere either took over or developed some of the language abilities that it cost her in some of the skills that are normally mediated by the right side of the brain,” added Grafman.

Michelle has difficulties controlling her emotions and still struggles with abstract concepts and becomes easily lost in unfamiliar surroundings but she has improved a lot since she started recovery. Michelle works, does most household chores and is fairly independent.