ABSTRACT
Any historical account of theory and research on hemispheric communication poses several problems and challenges. This chapter provides a review of the anatomical study of the corpus callosum and reviews experimental and clinical studies of the corpus callosum in animals and humans. Comparisons across species, however, contributed to the presumptive functional significance of the corpus callosum by showing that the structure varied regularly in size in mammals, being largest in the higher mammals and largest of all in man. Understandably, contemporary theory and research regarding interhemispheric communication have concentrated most on the forebrain commissures, the corpus callosum in particular by virtue of its exclusive neocortical origins and its massive size. The chapter describes the development of several lines of theory and research on the role of the corpus callosum in hemispheric communication. The negative evidence, nonetheless, far outweighed the positive, and so it reinforced previous doubts about the corpus callosum’s role in normal cognitive and perceptual functions.
