Stroke patients can route movement through spared neural pathways by learning

Evidence

Functional neural imaging is very useful here: it shows us that during the patient’s efforts to move the paralyzed arm, the left side of the motor region of the cortex, spared by the lesion, is activated. The patient, by himself or through rehabilitation, has learned to use nerve pathways that would not be there in the normal state. This reorganization of motor function testifies once more to the plasticity of brain mechanisms. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 105

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A person can control movement entirely through vision after losing proprioception — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1677