Cortical Hyper-Connectivity in a Stroke Patient with Rotated Drawing

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Neurology

Background:

• Constructional phenomena, like rotated drawings after stroke, are linked to visuospatial and executive deficits.
• Previous research suggests parietal and frontal regions are implicated in copy and recall rotation, respectively.

Observation:

• A case report examined a patient (DDA) with a right parietal stroke exhibiting 90° vertical axis rotation when copying and recalling complex figures.
• Resting-state functional connectivity (FC) was analyzed in the dorsal attention network (DAN) and frontal executive-control network (fECN).

Findings:

• DDA showed significantly increased FC within the DAN and fECN in the undamaged hemisphere compared to controls without drawing rotation.
• This heightened connectivity was specific to these networks and not observed in the language network.
• A patient with similar neuropsychological deficits but no drawing rotation did not exhibit these FC patterns.

Implications:

• Increased FC in DAN and fECN may represent pathological communication leading to impaired visuospatial attention and executive functions.
• These network-specific alterations could be the underlying neural mechanism for the constructional phenomenon of rotated drawing.
• This highlights the importance of examining functional connectivity in understanding complex cognitive deficits post-stroke.