Dichotic listening in commissurotomized and hemispherectomized subjects

Abstract

Three commissurotomized and two left-hemispherectomized subjects were tested on spoken report of sequences of three dichotic pairs of digits. With instruction to report only one digit from each pair, there was an overall advantage to the ear contralateral to the hemisphere mediating speech, but report of ipsilateral-ear digits ranged from 40 to 100%. In commissurotomized subjects, the more extreme ipsilateral suppression under instructions to report all digits may be due to failure to gain access to unattended information stored in the right hemisphere, rather than to suppression of the ipsilateral pathway. However one commissurotmized patient did appear to have access to right-hemisphere items, the result either of subcortical transfer or of external cross-cueing. The hemispherectomized subjects seemed able to store both attended and unattended information in the same hemisphere.