Warren S. Brown (Professor of Psychology and Director of the Lee Travis Research Institute at the Graduate School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California)
Prof Warren S. Brown is involved in experimental neuropsychological research related to the functions of the corpus callosum. Over the last 20 years his laboratory has conducted one of the largest studies so far on the cognitive and social profiles of individuals with agenesis of the corpus callosum. His research team is particularly interested in studying the consequences of ACC in individuals who are functioning
well overall but may have subtle problems in areas such as learning and memory, language, theory of mind, personality and emotion processing.
From a series of experiments conducted over the years, Prof Brown describes the following as the “core syndrome” of ACC: (1) reduced interhemispheric integration of sensory and motor information, (2) reduced cognitive processing speed, and (3) deficits in complex reasoning and novel problem solving. These difficulties are said to stem from the reduced communication between the two hemispheres of the brain and is evident in different domains of functioning such as cognition, behaviour and social contexts.
Prof Brown has found that simple visual and tactile information can be transferred between hemispheres in individuals with ACC, but encounter difficulty with more complex information. For example, adults with ACC could correctly judge whether two letters presented separately in the left and right visual fields were the same or different; however they took longer and made more errors when asked to judge if two patterns were the same or different. It was suggested that only a limited amount of information can be transferred between the two hemispheres in ACC and alternative pathways were likely being used.