Altered temporal variability-based functional reorganization of brain networks predicts motor outcome after stroke.

Only people whose stroke was subcortical were studied, so the results may not apply to people with cortical stroke. The stroke sample is small, at 63 people, and the authors say they plan to recruit more. Cognitive scores and information about neglect, aphasia or other deficits were not recorded. The paper never says what treatment the patients received during the four weeks between assessments, so the improvement in their arm and hand scores cannot be attributed to anything in particular. The brain measure was linked to motor scores taken on the same day as the scan, so it is unclear whether it predicts recovery or simply reflects how impaired the person was to begin with. Many statistical tests were run; 168 corrections for multiple comparisons were applied in the regression analyses alone.

The paper names several Chinese funding bodies, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Shanghai Natural Science Foundation, the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province, the Joint Foundation for Scientific and Technological Innovation of Fujian Province, the Research Personnel Cultivation Programme of Zhongda Hospital Southeast University, the Key Supporting Discipline Construction Project of Shanghai Health System, and the Key Project of Jiangsu Province's Key Research and Development Program. No competing-interest declaration appears in the text provided, and it does not say whether the funders had any role in the work.

Do not read this as proof that a brain scan can predict how well someone will recover, or that changing these brain signals would help. These are associations in one group of patients, and the same brain measure was linked to motor scores taken on the same day as the scan, so it is not clear it adds anything to the motor score you already have. No treatment was tested, and the paper never says what therapy the patients received between the two assessments.