Reemergence of activation with poststroke somatosensory recovery: a serial fMRI case study.

The authors demonstrate the potential for poststroke return of activation in regions normally involved in touch discrimination in a serial, whole-brain fMRI study of a patient with marked sensory loss followed by good recovery. A return of activation in ipsilesional primary and bilateral secondary somatosensory cortices was observed at 3 months after stroke and was maintained at 6 months, indicating a reemergence of activation after the interval of somatosensory recovery. There was little evidence of neural plastic changes early after stroke (2 weeks), when sensory loss was severe.