page_title: Corpus callosum
section_title: Epilepsy
hierarchical_section_title: Corpus callosum / Clinical significance / Epilepsy
caption_attribution_description: English: The image is of Douglas Myers (myself), i took it at Dalhousie Life Sciences Center on a research study investigating responses to startling. I do not care who uses the image or how, it was taken using a cell phone camera
context_page_description: The corpus callosum, also callosal commissure, is a wide, thick nerve tract, consisting of a flat bundle of commissural fibers, beneath the cerebral cortex in the brain. The corpus callosum is only found in placental mammals. It spans part of the longitudinal fissure, connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres, enabling communication between them. It is the largest white matter structure in the human brain, about ten centimetres in length and consisting of 200–300 million axonal projections.
  A number of separate nerve tracts, classed as subregions of the corpus callosum, connect different parts of the hemispheres. The main ones are known as the genu, the rostrum, the trunk or body, and the splenium.
context_section_description: The symptoms of refractory (difficult to treat) epilepsy can be reduced by cutting through the corpus callosum in an operation known as a corpus callosotomy. This is usually reserved for cases in which complex or grand mal seizures are produced by an epileptogenic focus on one side of the brain, causing an interhemispheric electrical storm. The diagnostic work up for this procedure involves an electroencephalogram, MRI, PET scan, and evaluation by a specialized neurologist, neurosurgeon, psychiatrist, and neuroradiologist before surgery can be considered.
caption: Electroencephalography is used to find the source of electrical activity causing a seizure as part of the surgical evaluation for a corpus callosotomy.
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