Posterior parietal cortical areas and recovery after motor stroke: a scoping review

Brain imaging and electrophysiology have significantly enhanced our current understanding of stroke-related changes in brain structure and function and their implications for recovery processes. In the motor domain, most studies have focused on key motor areas of the frontal lobe including the primary and secondary motor cortices. Time- and recovery-dependent alterations in regional anatomy, brain activity and inter-regional connectivity have been related to recovery. In contrast, the involvement of posterior parietal cortical areas in stroke recovery is poorly understood although these regions are similarly important for important aspects of motor functioning in the healthy brain. Just in recent years, the field has increasingly started to explore to what extent posterior parietal cortical areas might undergo equivalent changes in task-related activation, regional brain structure and inter-regional functional and structural connectivity after stroke. The aim of this scoping review is to give an update on available data covering these aspects and thereby providing novel insights into parieto-frontal interactions for systems neuroscience stroke recovery research in the upper limb motor domain. Reibelt et al. give an update on posterior parietal cortical areas and their changes in brain activation, regional brain structure and inter-regional structural, functional and effective connectivity and show how these changes relate to recovery processes after motor stroke. Graphical abstract