Absence of cortical reorganization following an internal capsule stroke in rodents

Cettina, P. E.; Guggenmos, D. J.; Sivakumar, S. S.; Murphy, M. D.; Barbay, H. S.; Nudo, R. J.; Bundy, D. T.

doi:10.1101/2025.10.31.685962

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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2025.10.31.685962

Absence of cortical reorganization following an internal capsule stroke in rodents

Cettina, P. E.·Guggenmos, D. J.·Sivakumar, S. S.·Murphy, M. D.·Barbay, H. S.·Nudo, R. J.·Bundy, D. T.

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Abstract

Stroke is a leading cause of disability, causing chronic motor impairments in many survivors. Although recovery is correlated with cortical reorganization, the impact of lesion location on post-stroke reorganization is uncertain. We compared movement-related neural activity following experimental infarcts to the motor cortex (M1) or internal capsule in rats. Neural activity was recorded from motor and somatosensory regions during a skilled pellet retrieval task longitudinally during the course of recovery. Cortical lesions resulted in early behavioral recovery accompanied by widespread reductions in neural activity across ipsilesional regions, indicative of large-scale reorganization. In contrast, internal capsule lesions produced delayed recovery with no evidence of long-term ipsilesional cortical reorganization. These findings challenge the relevance of cortical reorganization for recovery from subcortical lesions and indicate that post-stroke recovery mechanisms are lesion-specific and that models targeting subcortical white matter are essential for maximizing translational relevance.

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Cettina, P. E., Guggenmos, D. J., Sivakumar, S. S., Murphy, M. D., Barbay, H. S., Nudo, R. J., Bundy, D. T.. 2025-11-03. Absence of cortical reorganization following an internal capsule stroke in rodents. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.31.685962

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