One of the nice side effects of Chiari is an unquenchable thirst. Apparently, the cerebellum is in charge of my thirst meter.
I drink probable more than 100 oz if water a day and yet I am still thirsty! There is evidence to suggest that the cerebellum is responsible for a number of cognitive tasks. Here are a few of them: sensory processing and discrimination, mental imagery, motor learning, classical conditioning, non-motor learning and memory, linguistic processing, timing estimation, emotion perception and experience, visual spatial memory, executive function (including verbal working memory, strategy, reasoning, and verbal fluency) , and autonomic functions including the experience and anticipation of pain, thirst, hunger, and smell.
So ~ in summary ~ all of the above mentioned functions go haywire when the cerebellum is being squished into the spinal column!
