Methods
stroke, upper limb motor impairment
STROKE
We recruited 39 stroke patients with moderate to severe upper limb motor impairment and randomly assigned them to either the MIT or control groups. Patients in the MIT group received 4 weeks of MIT therapy plus conventional rehabilitation, while the control group only received conventional rehabilitation. The assessment of Fugl‐Meyer Upper Limb Scale (FM‐UL) and Barthel Index (BI), and fMRI scanning using a passive hand movement task were conducted on all patients before and after treatment. The changes in brain activation and functional connectivity (FC) were analyzed. Pearson's correlation analysis was conducted to evaluate the association between neural functional changes and motor improvement.