Brain. Lesion. Anatomy: an expert meeting to foster stroke lesion research on basis of large data basis in the framework of the dual loop model

Two days plenum conference and group workshops

Organisers: Prof. Dr. Cornelius Weiller (Universitätsklinikum Freiburg) und Dr. Michel Rijntjes (Universitätsklinikum Freiburg)

Cognitive neuroscience now has the opportunity to study large groups of neurological patients in order to reveal brain-behaviour relationships and their recovery. However, this approach faces considerable methodological challenges, both in terms of lesion analysis as well as cognitive tasks suited for patients with acute and chronic stroke.

After successful completion of including about 450 acute stroke patients in a prospective imaging- behaviour- outcome study, Freiburg is planning to start a new cohort with the arrival of a new MRI scanner generation. Taking a domain-general dual loop-model as a preliminary neurocognitive model, we have observed dissociations between more dorsal and more ventral cognitive functions across domains, including language, motor functions, and spatial processing in the past. This suggests basic disturbances related to dorsal and ventral streams, reflected in common deficits in various domains in patients with left and right hemisphere infarcts. Few research centers have been able to conduct comparable large-scale studies in the first place, and the available expertise is still severely limited.

In this meeting, we shall discuss all relevant aspects of large-scale patient studies, including appropriate imaging methods, sound and theoretically interesting tasks/ tests to be incorporated in the routine of a large and high-throughput clinic, data analysis methods, including non-parametric procedures, and appropriate outcome parameters. We wish to invite interested expert scientists to either launch a multi-centre study or participate scientifically in a study with mono or oligo-centric recruitment of patients.