Early visual evoked potentials in callosal agenesis

Three participants with callosal agenesis and 12 neurologically normal participants were tested on a simple reaction time task, with visual evoked potentials collected using a high-density 128-channel system. Independent-components analyses were performed on the averaged visual evoked potentials to isolate the components of interest. Contrary to previous research with acallosals, evidence of ipsilateral activation was present in all 3 participants. Although ipsilateral visual components were present in all 4 unilateral conditions in the 2 related acallosal participants, in the 3rd, these were present only in the crossed visual field-hand conditions and not in the uncrossed conditions. Suggestions are made as to why these results differ from earlier findings and as to the neural mechanisms facilitating this ipsilateral activation.