Parietal operculum and motor cortex activities predict motor recovery in moderate to severe stroke

While motor recovery following mild stroke has been extensively studied with neuroimaging, mechanisms of recovery after moderate to severe strokes of the types that are often the focus for novel restorative therapies remain obscure. We used fMRI to: 1) characterize reorganization occurring after moderate to severe subacute stroke, 2) identify brain regions associated with motor recovery and 3) to test whether brain activity associated with passive movement measured in the subacute period could predict motor outcome six months later