Abstract
Damage to the corticospinal tract is widely studied following unilateral subcortical stroke, whereas less is known about changes to other sensorimotor pathways. This may be due to the fact that many studies investigated morphological changes in the brain, where the majority of descending and ascending brain pathways are overlapping, and did not investigate the brainstem where they separate. Moreover, these pathways continue passing through separate regions in the spinal cord. Here, using a high-resolution structural MRI of both the brainstem and the cervical spinal cord, we were able to identify a number of microstructurally altered pathways, in addition to the corticospinal tract, post stroke. Moreover, decreases in ipsi-lesional corticospinal tract integrity and increases in contra-lesional medial reticulospinal tract integrity were correlated with motor impairment severity in individuals with stroke.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 3524 |
| Journal | Nature communications |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2019 |
Funding
We are indebted to the individuals with stroke who participated in this study. We thank Azmi Banibaker, ARRT, for his assistance with MRI data collection, and Kevin Wilkins for his insightful comments on statistical analyses. This research was supported by funding from the NIH R01HD039343 and R01NS105759 awarded to J.P.A.D. and NIH NRSA F31NS105486 awarded to H.K.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Chemistry
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
- General Physics and Astronomy
