Effect of luminance on successiveness discrimination in the absence of the corpus callosum

Abstract

Three split-brained subjects, one with full forebrain commissurotomy and two with callosotomy, were impaired at judging whether pairs of lights in opposite visual fields were successive or simultaneous. This impairment did not vary with luminance when the lights were grey against a dark background, but was more pronounced when the lights were equiluminant with a yellow background. All three subjects were also better able to discriminate succession from simultaneity when the lights were both in the left visual field than when they were both in the right. A fourth subject with callosal agenesis was only slightly impaired relative to normal subjects, who were virtually errorless.