Voxel Based Lesion Symptom Mapping for the Identification of Critical Regions for Motor Recovery After Stroke

Peter Chang¹, Xue Wang¹, Darren Gitelman^1,2, Ryan Lo¹, Robert Levy^1,3, Justin Hulvershorn⁴, Todd Parrish¹

VLSM was conducted on 151 chronic stroke subjects from 26 imaging centers with different MR vendors and field strengths. The results identify regions in the corona radiata that appear to assimilate motor, pre-motor and sensory information similarly for right and left hemisphere lesions. There were significant results for dominant lesions but not non-dominant lesions. This indicates that following stroke of the non-dominant hemisphere, reorganization of the dominant hemisphere occurs to a greater degree than the reorganization of the non-dominant hemisphere following a dominant lesion. This population based study may improve the ability to give an accurate prognosis and optimize treatment.