Question

Why is the corpus callosum severed in some people? What have neuroscientists learned about the functions of the right and left hemispheres from studying individuals whose corpus callosum has been cut?

Answer 1

The Corpus callosum is severed for some people with refractory epilepsy to prevent the epilepsy from spreading from one hemisphere to the other.

The American neuroscientist Roger Sperry and his team experimented on people whose corpus callosum had been severed. They found that these people could easily describe images that were flashed to the right of their visual field but fail to describe those that were flashed to the left of their visual field. Since the images that were flashed to the right were perceived by the left hemisphere of the brain,this finding confirmed that the left hemisphere is associated with language. By repeating the experiment with tactile stimuli, and later a combination of both tactile and visual stimuli Sperry and his team were able to confirm that the right hemisphere of the brain processes spatial and nonverbal information while the left hemisphere processes verbal information.