A PLASTIC STRUCTURE

S troke is the leading cause of long-term disability worldwide and a condition for whichthere is no universally accepted treatment. The development of new effective therapeu-tic strategies relies on a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying recovery offunction. Noninvasive techniques to study brain function, including functional mag-netic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, transcranial magnetic stimulation, elec-troencephalography, and magnetoencephalography, led to recent studies that identified some of these operatingmechanisms, resulting in the formulation of novel approaches tomotor rehabilitation. Arch Neurol. 2004;61:1844-1848 Stroke is the leading cause of disability worldwide. The value of specific rehabili-tation therapies aimed at assisting adapta-tion to impairment is now well recog-nized, but therapeutic strategies designed to restore function by minimizing impair-ment are by comparison poorly devel-oped. This review considers the advances made toward understanding how cerebral reorganization following focal damage is re-lated to functional recovery, and how these insights might be translated into clinical benefits for patients