Prior to the implantation of brain stimulating electrodes, it would be valuable to have an estimation of the severity of pre-existing injury to the pathways of interest. In chronic stroke patients, we used resting-state functional MRI and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to identify functionally connected regions of the dentatothalamocortical pathway. We found that diffusion tensor imaging metrics of the tract connecting thalamus to the hand-motor hotspot were significantly correlated with hand function. These results suggest that this non-invasive functional/structural MRI/TMS approach can provide pathway-specific injury metrics that may be useful as part of a pre-surgical evaluation.
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