What Is a Corpus Callosotomy?

The first human split-brain surgery was in Los Angeles in 1962. A 48-year-old veteran suffered from severe epilepsy. The patient has not recovered from a convulsion and another convulsion has arrived

Corpus callosum

Corpus Callosotomy, also known as "

After all other treatments failed, his doctor performed a daring operation: to cut the connection between the left and right brain by cutting the corpus callosum to reduce the patient's pain. They call this operation split-brain surgery. The operation was very effective, not only relieved the convulsions, but even the patient was completely cured. With the development of research on brain asymmetry, researchers have found that although corpus callosum cures some people's epilepsy, they have produced many weird behaviors. For example, the left and right hemispheres of split-brain people often show decision-making. Contradictions, especially Alien Hand Syndrome with left and right hands, research by Chinese neuropsychologists has found that the figure-building ability of the split-brain person is impaired.

Professor Roger Sperry of California Institute of Technology and his assistants Gazzaniga and Miles and others seized this rare opportunity to conduct in-depth research on patients who had undergone split-brain surgery. Gazzaniga also designed instruments specifically for testing the connection between the left and right brains of split-brain people. It was found that when a beam of light stimulation was projected only to the patient's left field of vision (that is, only the right brain was visible, but the left brain was invisible), although the patient responded to the stimulus with the left-hand button, he said that he saw nothing. . Since the patient has confirmed with the left-hand key, it indicates that his right brain has indeed seen a light stimulus. But because the left brain doesn't see it, it controls the speech center to make a negative answer. This is how the split-brainer first discovered two separate consciousness systems. Later, Sperry and others continued to study this phenomenon for more than 5 years, and the results proved the existence of this strange state: "The two hemispheres of the human brain are separated, and each hemisphere seems to be able to Hemispheres perform their functions beyond the scope of consciousness, and each hemisphere can learn, remember, express emotions, and perform planned actions. "This important discovery led Sperry to the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

1. Various antiepileptic drugs treat intractable epilepsy that cannot be controlled by seizures. The course of medical treatment is at least 2 to 4 years.

2. Generalized seizures, usually sports or tension-free.

3. After the seizures are relieved, the patient's function may be improved.

4. Syndromes suitable for corpus callosum incision include: congenital and infantile hemiplegia with refractory epilepsy; Rasmussen syndrome; Lennox-Gastaut syndrome; Sturge-Weber syndrome; unilateral hemimegaly Disease; cerebral hypoplasia

The following cases are not suitable for corpus callosum surgery, such as patients with mental retardation, old age, ambiguous dominant hemisphere, generalized epilepsy without local onset, and bilateral independent EEG abnormalities.