ABSTRACT:The aim of the present study was to investigate corticospinal and intracortical excitability in patients with congenital stroke. In adults, stroke sequelae reduce corticospinal excitability, as indicated by an elevated threshold for motor evoked potentials (MEP), and increase intracortical excitability, as indicated by reduced intracortical inhibition. Ten patients with pre-or perinatally acquired, unilateral cortico-subcortical infarctions in the middle cerebral artery territory were studied with single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to measure motor threshold (MT) and with paired pulse TMS to study short interval intracortical inhibition (SICI) and intracortical facilitation (ICF). Eight healthy, age-matched subjects served as controls. MT over the affected hemisphere of patients compared with the dominant hemisphere of controls was significantly elevated, reflecting reduced corticospinal excitability, and SICI was significantly reduced, reflecting increased intracortical excitability. No such differences were found for ICF. Findings in patients with congenital stroke were comparable with adulthood stroke. Thus, similar assumptions can be made: reduced corticospinal excitability is probably a consequence of neuronal damage. Reduced intracortical inhibition might represent deficient inhibitory cortical properties or might reflect a compensational mechanism, dispositioning for use-dependent plasticity. T he human brain is capable of reorganization (1-3). In patients with congenital stroke, reorganization is determined by the maturational state of the brain at the time of the insult (4). Early studies using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) focused on corticospinal connectivity and revealed in some patients preserved ipsilateral motor pathways from the undamaged motor cortex to the hemiplegic hand (5-9). Subsequent studies combining TMS with structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed that the type of corticospinal reorganization as well as the compensatory recruitment of areas within the contralesional hemisphere depend on the extent of the underlying brain lesion (10). Furthermore, location and timing period affect the type and efficacy of reorganization, with significant impact on clinical outcome (11).Until now, studies investigating intracortical excitability by transcranial magnetic paired pulse stimulation have been conducted only in patients with adulthood stroke (12-15). This technique allows us to study changes in the excitability of both inhibitory and excitatory intracortical circuits, a mechanism credited to be involved in reorganization of the brain (16 -19). In adulthood, cortical stroke intracortical excitability is increased, as indicated by a reduced intracortical inhibition with a heightened amplitude of the conditioned motor evoked potential (MEP) (12-15). There is evidence from developmental studies that corticospinal excitability as well as intracortical excitability are age dependent and are not fully established up to several years post...