Extent and limits of cerebral adjustment to early section or congenital absence of the corpus callosum

Abstract

The ability to effect inter- and intrahemispheric comparisons of visual and tactile stimuli was studied in 4 callosotomized patients and 6 callosal agenesis subjects using response accuracy and response times to determine the extent of cerebral adjustment to functional or congenital absence of the corpus callosum. The visual tasks involved within- and between-fields presentation of pairs of colours and shapes. The tactile tasks required uni- and bimanual comparisons of 3 categories of stimuli (size, shape and texture) of increasing difficulty. Older callosotomized children showed disconnection deficits similar to those reported in adult split-brain patients, whereas both acallosal subjects and our youngest patient with complete callosal transection demonstrated a high level of accuracy in the interhemispheric tasks. However, all patients required considerably more time to accomplish the cross-integration of relatively complex visual and tactile information which seems to be one of the major limitations of the compensatory mechanisms. The results also indicate that the quality of transfer differs between the acallosal and early-callosotomized patients in relation to the sensory modality studied. Thus, visual cross-matching was found to be superior to bimanual matching for the callosotomized group, whereas intermanual comparisons proved to be more efficient than visual integration in the acallosals. These divergent findings suggest not only that different compensatory mechanisms may be operating in visual and tactile transfer, but also that the same mechanisms may be utilized differently by the two populations deprived of the use of callosal connections.