Table 1.

Example neurobiological mechanisms of change after stroke and hypothesized spatiotemporal patterns observable in human neuroimaging experiments.

Mechanism	Location	Timing	Relationship to behavior
Brain changes occurring as a direct biological effect of the lesion
Maladaptive disinhibition	Region that is directly inhibited by a lesioned tissue, typically the homotopic region of the right hemisphere	Immediate	Impedes performance on behavior performed by a perilesional tissue
Deafferentation atrophy	Structure that receives axonal projections from the lesioned structure	Delayed, gradual	Atrophy may correspond with reduced performance for behavior served by the atrophied structure
Diaschisis	Regions that form a functional network with a lesioned tissue	Immediate	Dysfunction in the network impedes behavior performed by the network
Brain changes related to recovery
Axonal collateral sprouting	Region that shares axonal targets with the lesioned tissue	Delayed, gradual	Compensates for behavior served by the lesioned tissue, effective to the degree that the new region is similar to the original region in computations and connectivity
Engagement of secondary processors due to synaptic plasticity	Network that is already involved in the behavior to some degree or was involved early in development	Early, gradual	Compensates for behavior, likely to be less efficient than the lesioned network was prior to stroke