This study looked at how strokes affect nonverbal cognitive skills, like recognizing patterns and understanding meaning and relationships between things, in people with language disorders after stroke. It focused on whether brain disconnections, especially those caused by white matter hyperintensities (WMH), contribute to these difficulties. Researchers tested 73 stroke survivors using nonverbal tasks and used brain scans to measure disconnections caused by both stroke lesions and WMH. They found that many participants had trouble with nonverbal cognitive tasks. Disconnections from WMH were more strongly linked to these problems than the stroke damage itself, especially for tasks that required recognizing conceptual relationships between objects. This means that looking at white matter damage may help improve how we understand and treat thinking problems in people with post-stroke language disorders. 

 

Impact of White Matter Hyperintensities on Nonverbal Cognition Through Structural Disconnections in Poststroke Aphasia.
Rangus I, Busby N, Teghipco A, Roth RW, Wilmskoetter J, Rorden C, Hillis AE, den Ouden DB, Newman-Norlund R, Fridriksson J, Bonilha L. Stroke. 2025 Apr 3. doi: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.124.049058. Online ahead of print. PMID: 40177790