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No evidence for motor recovery-related cortical connectivity changes after stroke using resting-state fMRI

PUBLICATION: 
Journal Article
Authors: 
Meret Branscheidt, Naveed Ejaz, Jing Xu, Mario Widmer, Michelle D Harran, Juan Camilo Cortés, Tomoko Kitago, Pablo A Celnik, Carlos Hernandez-Castillo, Jörn Diedrichsen, Andreas R Luft, John W Krakauer
Year Published: 
2022
Publisher: 
J Neurophysiol. 2022 Mar 1;127(3):637-650. doi: 10.1152/jn.00148.2021. Epub 2021 Dec 29.
Identifiers: 
PMID: 34965743 | DOI: 10.1152/jn.00148.2021
Full-Text on PMC

Abstract

It has been proposed that a form of cortical reorganization (changes in functional connectivity between brain areas) can be assessed with resting-state (rs) fMRI. Here we report a longitudinal data-set collected from 19 patients with subcortical stroke and 11 controls. Patients were imaged up to five times over one year. We found no evidence, using rs-fMRI, for post-stroke cortical connectivity changes despite substantial behavioral recovery. These results could be construed as questioning the value of resting-state imaging. Here we argue instead that they are consistent with other emerging reasons to challenge the idea of motor recovery-related cortical reorganization post-stroke when conceived of as changes in connectivity between cortical areas.

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