The divergent ways brains recover from strokes

The relationship in a healthy brain between neural activity and blood flow is called neurovascular coupling, which gets thrown off by strokes. In a new study that sought to look at the impact of ministrokes, researchers studying mice found that the correlation between cerebral blood flow and neural activity disassociated immediately after the stroke, then worsened over a few days. And even as blood flow returned, issues with neural activity lingered. The study indicates that looking at blood flow as a way to gauge recovery from stroke might miss ongoing neural deficits. Ministrokes are thought to have a role in the development of vascular dementia.