Ischemic Stroke Quotes

“The results in rodents suggest that there is something about ischemic stroke itself that induces a time-limited window of augmented responsiveness to training. Dramatic proof of this conjecture came from a recent experiment by Steve Zeiler and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. They reasoned that a second motor cortical stroke might paradoxically reopen a sensitive period of responsiveness to training and promote full recovery from a previous first stroke. To test this they gave mice a first stroke in motor cortex and then waited a week before beginning retraining. As expected, the mice recovered only minimally because too much time had been allowed to pass before training was initiated. They then gave these same mice a second stroke in an area near to the original stroke, and, not surprisingly, the animals developed an even worse impairment. The surprising result was that with retraining the mice returned to normal levels of performance. In essence a previous stroke was treated with a new stroke. It should be made clear that this experiment was done to prove definitively that there is a sensitive period after stroke that allows training to promote full recovery at the level of impairment.
It is clearly not a viable therapeutic option to induce a second stroke in patients after a first stroke. Other means will need to be found to have the same desired effect without causing more damage to the brain. One promising option is to combine drugs, such as the serotonin reuptake inhibitor Fluoxetine (Prozac), with training early after stroke. Another is to drastically increase the intensity and dosage of behavioral training that patients receive early after stroke.”
― David J. Linden, Think Tank: Forty Neuroscientists Explore the Biological Roots of Human Experience