Kinematic descriptors of arm reaching movement are sensitive to hemisphere-specific immediate neuromodulatory effects of transcranial direct current stimulation post stroke.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) exerts beneficial effects on motor recovery after stroke, presumably by enhancement of adaptive neural plasticity. However, patients with extensive damage may experience null or deleterious effects with the predominant application mode of anodal (excitatory) stimulation of the damaged hemisphere. In such cases, excitatory stimulation of the non-damaged hemisphere might be considered.

Lesion location impact on functional recovery of the hemiparetic upper limb.

The effect of stroke topography on the recovery of hemiparetic upper limb (HUL) function is unclear due to limitations in previous studies-examination of lesion effects only in one point of time, or grouping together patients with left and right hemispheric damage (LHD, RHD), or disregard to different lesion impact on proximal and distal operations. Here we used voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) to investigate the impact of stroke topography on HUL function taking into consideration the effects of (a) assessment time (subacute, chronic phases), (b) side of damaged hemisphere (left, right), (c) HUL part (proximal, distal). HUL function was examined in 3 groups of patients-Subacute (n = 130), Chronic (n = 66), and Delta (n = 49; patients examined both in the subacute and chronic phases)-using the proximal and distal sub-divisions of the Fugl-Meyer (FM) and the Box and Blocks (B&B) tests.