Corpus callosotomy
Surgical procedure for epilepsy
A corpus callosotomy () is a palliative surgical procedure for the treatment of medically refractory epilepsy. The procedure was first performed in 1940 by William P. van Wagenen. In this procedure, the corpus callosum is cut through, in an effort to limit the spread of epileptic activity between the two halves of the brain.
Although the corpus callosum is the largest white matter tract connecting the hemispheres, some limited interhemispheric communication is still possible via the anterior and posterior commissures. After the operation, however, the brain often struggles to send messages between hemispheres, which can lead to side effects such as speech irregularities, disconnection syndrome, and alien hand syndrome.
History
The first instances of corpus callosotomy were performed in the 1940s by William P. van Wagenen, who co-founded and served as president of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. Attempting to treat epilepsy, van Wagenen studied and published the results of his surgeries, including the split-brain outcomes for patients. Most of the surgeries involved a partial division of the corpus callosum and resulted in improvements of seizure control in all patients. Wagenen's work preceded the 1981 Nobel Prize-winning research of Roger W. Sperry by two decades. Sperry studied patients who had undergone corpus callosotomy and detailed their resulting split-brain characteristics.
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