Corpus Callosum Maturation and Line Bisection Performance in Healthy Children

Line bisection performance in children has been hypothesized to be a measure of corpus callosum maturation. Several previous studies have shown that normal prepubescent children bisect lines to the right of true center with their right hand and to the left with their left hand (symmetrical neglect). In contrast, children entering puberty reportedly bisect lines to the left with both the right and left hands (pseudoneglect). The shift from symmetrical to pseudoneglect has been hypothesized to reflect corpus callosum maturation and its involvement in the transfer of attention-based visuospatial processes. In the current study, line bisection performance and MR quantitative corpus callosum volumes were examined in 46 healthy children ages 8–18 years. A linear relationship between corpus callosum volume and age was found. However, the expected age-contingent line bisection performance pattern was not observed. In addition to the expected two patterns of line bisection bias, pseudoneglect and symmetric neglect, two additional distinct patterns of line bisection were identified. These findings, and other findings in the literature, raise important questions about the reliability and validity of the line bisection test. No relationship was found between corpus callosum volume and amount or direction of line bisection deviation. Our findings do not support previous hypotheses regarding line bisection-corpus callosum relationship.