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Visual discrimination after lesion of the posterior corpus callosum

Neurology Service, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Department of Neurology, Harvad Medical School, Boaton, MA.

Visual discrimination was studied in each visual field of a patient with surgical section of the posterior corpus callosum. Light-detection thresholds were increased nearly equally in right and left visual fields, suggesting that normal thresholds require the cooperative activity of both posterior cerebral hemispheres, mediated by the corpus callosum. In contrast, there was superiority in the right visual field in naming, copying, and matching letters, numbers, and colors, but not unfamiliar shapes. The results are attributed to a differential effect of experience on perception in each visual field. The right-visual-field superiority in learning to perceive arrays of letters, numbers, and colors may result directly from the superiority of the left hemisphere in speech.

Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Levine, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114.

Accepted for publication June 13, 1979.

Presented in part at the thirty-first annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, Chicago, April 1979.

This research was supported by Grant No. NS-13102 from the National Institutes of Health and by funds from the Rowland Foundation.

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