Deans' stroke musings: Right Hemisphere Functional Connectivity Increases in Proportion to Left Hemisphere Lesion Size, but Not Within the Language Network

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Sunday, September 6, 2026

Right Hemisphere Functional Connectivity Increases in Proportion to Left Hemisphere Lesion Size, but Not Within the Language Network

You'll have to ask your competent? doctor if there is any hidden aphasia recovery protocol in here. A blank stare is a fireable cause.

Right Hemisphere Functional Connectivity Increases in Proportion to Left Hemisphere Lesion Size, but Not Within the Language Network

Natalya Vladyko 1, Andrew T DeMarco 1, Peter E Turkeltaub 1 2

Affiliations

PMID: 42698375
PMCID: PMC13545644
DOI: 10.1002/hbm.70631

Abstract

Left hemisphere (LH) strokes often disrupt the language network (LN), causing aphasia. The right hemisphere (RH) has been proposed to contribute to post-stroke aphasia outcomes, but existing findings on RH functional connectivity (FC) changes after LH stroke are inconsistent. This study systematically investigates whether and how the RH FC differs in chronic stroke survivors compared to healthy controls, and whether these differences relate to lesion characteristics and language outcomes. Using a naturalistic movie-watching fMRI paradigm, we compared the RH FC in a large sample of chronic LH stroke survivors (n = 85) to neurologically healthy controls (n = 71). We first used a validated semantic decision fMRI task to identify a core LN and a non-canonical LN (labeled Semantic Network (SN)). We then mapped group FC differences within and between these LH networks and their RH homotopes. Compared to controls, stroke survivors had higher overall within-RH FC and lower within-LH and interhemispheric connectivity. These differences were greater with larger lesions. However, few of the RH FC differences were observed within the RH LN. Rather, most changes were between networks and were distributed widely in the RH. Greater RH connectivity was not associated with lesions or reduced FC in homotopic LH regions, although lesions of LH superior and middle temporal gyri were associated with increased FC between RH SN and LN. RH FC was not associated with behavioral outcomes. These findings show that LH lesions lead to increased RH FC, but the pattern of results suggests that these changes may not reflect meaningful functional reorganization that contributes to language function after stroke. TRIAL REGISTRATION: clinicaltrials.gov NCT04991519.