Stroke Research at UBC

The results of two studies involving patients who have survived severe strokes indicate that rehabilitation strategies for such patients need to be improved.

PhD student Jodi Edwards discovered that although more Canadians are surviving severe strokes, they are experiencing poorer quality of life after the event. Her study was published in the May issue of the journal Stroke.

Post-doctoral fellow Sean Meehan established that survivors of severe stroke use the prefrontal cortex area of the brain when learning new movements, to compensate for damage to the normally-involved motor region.

“Jodi’s study tells us that quality of life after stroke has decreased in the past decade,” says her supervisor, Lara Boyd, Canada Research Chair in Neurobiology of Motor Learning. “A potential reason for this decline is that while we’re good at rehabilitating patients who have suffered mild to moderately severe strokes, we have very little to offer the increasing numbers of Canadians who have survived a severe stroke. But Sean’s study is pointing to ways to make a major impact in post-stroke care.”

Edwards analyzed public health statistics from 1996-2005, a period when there were many advances in early-intervention treatment for severe stroke. Meehan studied functional magnetic resonance imaging results from health subjects and stroke patients to compare which parts of the brain were engaged in performing new tasks.

“This new information on how the brain compensates for damage suggests two potential strategies for rehabilitation: We could work on restoring the original brain function before the stroke occurred, or by promoting this new pathway,” says Meehan, who is Edwards’ lab mate and also supervised by Boyd.

“The convergence of these findings from seemingly divergent areas of research is telling us that the brain isn’t working in compartments with each area taking charge of certain functions that may be irrevocably damaged by injury or disease,” says Boyd. “Rather, the different domains of the brain are inter-related and may
work together to take on new challenges.”

UBC Alumni Magazine Trek Summer 2010, p. 9