title: Contralateral hand anesthesia transiently improves poststroke sensory deficits.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To test a possible strategy to alleviate somatosensory deficits after stroke.
  
  
  METHODS
  Here, we applied ischemic nerve block to the intact hand of patients with chronic stroke, which in healthy subjects elicits improvements in sensibility of the other hand.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We found that sensibility in the affected hand improved with intact hand anesthesia, but not with intact foot anesthesia or no anesthesia.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We conclude that reduction of sensory input from the intact hand leads to site-specific improvements in tactile discriminative skills in the affected hand after the period of anesthesia, a potentially relevant finding in designing neurorehabilitative interventions.
authors.affiliation: Human Cortical Physiology Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Voller
authors.forename: Agnes
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Flöel
authors.forename: Konrad J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Werhahn
authors.forename: Shashi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ravindran
authors.forename: Carolyn W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Leonardo G
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Cohen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000758:Anesthesia / Q000379:methods*; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006225:Hand / Q000294:innervation* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D018737:Hand Strength; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D012678:Sensation Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000628:therapy*; D012684:Sensory Thresholds; D020521:Stroke / Q000150:complications; D013997:Time Factors