In predicting a stroke's toll, location matters, but so do connections

Each year, roughly 666,000 Americans survive a stroke, and for them, the aftermath can be hard to predict. Some stroke patients have difficulty speaking or grasp for words that do not come. Some suffer problems with vision, balance or mobility. Some are addled by attention, memory and other cognitive deficits that can range from subtle to severe. To glean what kinds of disabilities a patient will probably face, neurologists have long looked at the location of the lesion a stroke leaves behind -- on a brain scan, the darkened site where cells have died off.