Sook-Lei Liew

Dr. Liew’s research focuses on mechanisms of neural plasticity in healthy individuals and individuals after neurological injury in order to improve their quality of life and engagement in meaningful activities. She directs the Neural Plastiticity and Neurorehabilitation Laboratory, whose goals are: 1) to characterize processes of neural plasticity during learning and rehabilitation using neuroimaging and cortical physiology, 2) to enhance neural plasticity and neurorehabilitation through novel techniques, such as noninvasive brain stimulation and brain computer interfaecs, and 3) to personalize the use of plasticity-inducing paradigms in order to capitalize on each individual’s unique learning or recovery potential.

• A Community Advisory Board Model to Strengthen Community-Academic Partnerships in Stroke Research. OTJR (Thorofare N J). 2026 Apr; 46(2):183-192.. View in PubMed
• Optimizing the Approach to Calculating CST Lesion Load in Ischemic Stroke Patients for Understanding Motor Outcomes. Neurorehabil Neural Repair. 2026 Mar 02; 15459683261417241.. View in PubMed
• Targeted isolation and identification of isoquinoline alkaloids from Xylopia ferruginea bark with anti Aβ-induced paralysis activity. Fitoterapia. 2026 Mar; 189:107040.. View in PubMed
• Self-organizing recruitment of compensatory cortical areas post-stroke can maximize residual motor performance. IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2026 Feb 16; PP.. View in PubMed
• Associations between contralesional neuroplasticity and motor impairment through deep learning-derived MRI regional brain age in chronic stroke (ENIGMA): a multicohort, retrospective, observational study. Lancet Digit Health. 2026 Jan; 8(1):100942.. View in PubMed
• Asymmetry in fractional anisotropy of the corticospinal tract correlates with measures of body structure/function and activity in the chronic phase after stroke. Top Stroke Rehabil. 2025 Dec 18; 1-11.. View in PubMed
• Indole alkaloids from Ochreinauclea maingayi (Rubiaceae) as butyrylcholinesterase inhibitors and their paralysis effect in transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans. Nat Prod Res. 2025 Dec; 39(23):6815-6822.. View in PubMed
• Collaborative AI for precision neurorehabilitation: a roadmap. J Neuroeng Rehabil. 2025 Nov 27; 22(1):269.. View in PubMed
• Hemisynthesis of lupeol and betulin derivatives and their in vitro antimalarial activity against Plasmodium falciparum FCR3. Nat Prod Res. 2025 Nov 04; 1-10.. View in PubMed
• Estimating white matter hyperintensities volume in individuals with stroke using T1-weighted images. medRxiv. 2025 Oct 24.. View in PubMed
• Brain Age Is Longitudinally Associated With Sensorimotor Impairment and Mild Cognitive Impairment in Subacute Stroke. J Am Heart Assoc. 2025 Oct 21; 14(20):e041603.. View in PubMed
• Comparison of post-stroke white matter assessment using disconnectome-symptom mapping versus quantitative diffusion MRI. Neuroimage. 2025 Aug 15; 317:121347.. View in PubMed
• DeepISLES: a clinically validated ischemic stroke segmentation model from the ISLES’22 challenge. Nat Commun. 2025 Aug 09; 16(1):7357.. View in PubMed
• Insecticidal activity of phenylpropanoids from Piper sarmentosum and their interactions with glutathione S-transferase from adult mosquitoes. Acta Trop. 2025 Jul; 267:107681.. View in PubMed
• Sequential two-step, one-pot microwave-assisted Urech synthesis of 5-monosubstituted hydantoins from L-amino acids in water. Beilstein J Org Chem. 2025; 21:596-600.. View in PubMed
• Larger perivascular space volume fraction is associated with worse post-stroke sensorimotor outcomes: An ENIGMA analysis. medRxiv. 2024 Dec 26.. View in PubMed
• Greater lesion damage is bidirectionally related with accelerated brain aging after stroke. medRxiv. 2024 Dec 14.. View in PubMed
• Severe motor impairment is associated with lower contralesional brain age in chronic stroke. medRxiv. 2024 Oct 28.. View in PubMed
• Targeted Isolation of Antiviral Labdane Diterpenes from the Bark of Neo-uvaria foetida (Annonaceae) using LC-MS/MS-Based Molecular Networking. J Nat Prod. 2024 Aug 23; 87(8):1941-1951.. View in PubMed
• Genetic Variation and Stroke Recovery: The STRONG Study. Stroke. 2024 08; 55(8):2094-2102.. View in PubMed
• Modulation of the Association Between Corticospinal Tract Damage and Outcome After Stroke by White Matter Hyperintensities. Neurology. 2024 May 28; 102(10):e209387.. View in PubMed
• Synthesis and biological evaluation of hydantoin derivatives as potent antiplasmodial agents. Bioorg Med Chem Lett. 2024 May 01; 103:129701.. View in PubMed
• The protective effects of Zingiber zerumbet rhizome against fevers in rats. Naturwissenschaften. 2024 Apr 01; 111(2):20.. View in PubMed
• Pre-Implementation Analysis of the Usability and Acceptability of a Poststroke Complex Telehealth Biofeedback Intervention. Am J Occup Ther. 2024 Mar 01; 78(2).. View in PubMed
• Recovery of Function After Acquired Neurological Injury. Am J Occup Ther. 2024 Mar 01; 78(2).. View in PubMed
• Transforming modeling in neurorehabilitation: clinical insights for personalized rehabilitation. J Neuroeng Rehabil. 2024 02 04; 21(1):18.. View in PubMed
• Data-driven biomarkers better associate with stroke motor outcomes than theory-based biomarkers. Brain Commun. 2024; 6(4):fcae254.. View in PubMed
• Improvements in motor control are associated with improved quality of life following an at-home muscle biofeedback program for chronic stroke. Front Hum Neurosci. 2024; 18:1356052.. View in PubMed
• 13C NMR-based dereplication using MixONat software to decipher potent anti-cholinesterase compounds in Mesua lepidota bark. Bioorg Chem. 2023 12; 141:106859.. View in PubMed
• White matter hyperintensities modify relationships between corticospinal tract damage and motor outcomes after stroke. medRxiv. 2023 Oct 30.. View in PubMed
• Corpus Callosal Microstructure Predicts Bimanual Motor Performance in Chronic Stroke Survivors: a Preliminary Cross-Sectional Study. Top Stroke Rehabil. 2023 09; 30(6):626-634.. View in PubMed
• Data-driven biomarkers outperform theory-based biomarkers in predicting stroke motor outcomes. bioRxiv. 2023 Sep 01.. View in PubMed
• White Matter Integrity and Chronic Poststroke Upper Limb Function: An ENIGMA Stroke Recovery Analysis. Stroke. 2023 09; 54(9):2438-2441.. View in PubMed
• Acceptability of a Telerehabilitation Biofeedback System Among Stroke Survivors: A Qualitative Analysis. OTJR (Thorofare N J). 2023 07; 43(3):549-557.. View in PubMed
• N-Methyl Costaricine and Costaricine, Two Potent Butyrylcholinesterase Inhibitors from Alseodaphne pendulifolia Gamb. Int J Mol Sci. 2023 Jun 27; 24(13).. View in PubMed
• Association of Brain Age, Lesion Volume, and Functional Outcome in Patients With Stroke. Neurology. 2023 05 16; 100(20):e2103-e2113.. View in PubMed
• Morphinan Alkaloids from the Leaves of Alphonsea cylindrica and Their Antibacterial Properties. Planta Med. 2023 Jan; 89(1):79-85.. View in PubMed
• Optimizing automated white matter hyperintensity segmentation in individuals with stroke. Front Neuroimaging. 2023; 2:1099301.. View in PubMed
• ISLES 2022: A multi-center magnetic resonance imaging stroke lesion segmentation dataset. Sci Data. 2022 Dec 10; 9(1):762.. View in PubMed
• Increased cognitive load in immersive virtual reality during visuomotor adaptation is associated with decreased long-term retention and context transfer. J Neuroeng Rehabil. 2022 10 05; 19(1):106.. View in PubMed
• Observational Study of Neuroimaging Biomarkers of Severe Upper Limb Impairment After Stroke. Neurology. 2022 Jul 25; 99(4):e402-e413.. View in PubMed
• A large, curated, open-source stroke neuroimaging dataset to improve lesion segmentation algorithms. Sci Data. 2022 06 16; 9(1):320.. View in PubMed
• Chronic Stroke Sensorimotor Impairment Is Related to Smaller Hippocampal Volumes: An ENIGMA Analysis. J Am Heart Assoc. 2022 05 17; 11(10):e025109.. View in PubMed
• Corticospinal Tract Lesion Load Originating From Both Ventral Premotor and Primary Motor Cortices Are Associated With Post-stroke Motor Severity. Neurorehabil Neural Repair. 2022 03; 36(3):179-182.. View in PubMed
• A checklist for assessing the methodological quality of concurrent tES-fMRI studies (ContES checklist): a consensus study and statement. Nat Protoc. 2022 03; 17(3):596-617.. View in PubMed
• Plant Terpenoids as the Promising Source of Cholinesterase Inhibitors for Anti-AD Therapy. Biology (Basel). 2022 Feb 14; 11(2).. View in PubMed
• A standardized protocol for manually segmenting stroke lesions on high-resolution T1-weighted MR images. Front Neuroimaging. 2022; 1:1098604.. View in PubMed
• Functional and neuromuscular changes induced via a low-cost, muscle-computer interface for telerehabilitation: A feasibility study in chronic stroke. Front Neuroergon. 2022; 3:1046695.. View in PubMed
• Editorial: Understanding stroke recovery to improve outcomes: From acute care to chronic rehabilitation. Front Neurol. 2022; 13:1021033.. View in PubMed
• Testing a convolutional neural network-based hippocampal segmentation method in a stroke population. Hum Brain Mapp. 2022 01; 43(1):234-243.. View in PubMed
• The ENIGMA Stroke Recovery Working Group: Big data neuroimaging to study brain-behavior relationships after stroke. Hum Brain Mapp. 2022 01; 43(1):129-148.. View in PubMed
• Repetitive Peripheral Sensory Stimulation as an Add-On Intervention for Upper Limb Rehabilitation in Stroke: A Randomized Trial. Neurorehabil Neural Repair. 2021 12; 35(12):1059-1064.. View in PubMed
• Virtual Reality for the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders: A Scoping Review. Am J Occup Ther. 2021 Nov 01; 75(6).. View in PubMed
• Predictors of real-time fMRI neurofeedback performance and improvement – A machine learning mega-analysis. Neuroimage. 2021 08 15; 237:118207.. View in PubMed
• Development of a Low-Cost, Modular Muscle-Computer Interface for At-Home Telerehabilitation for Chronic Stroke. Sensors (Basel). 2021 Mar 05; 21(5).. View in PubMed
• Smaller spared subcortical nuclei are associated with worse post-stroke sensorimotor outcomes in 28 cohorts worldwide. Brain Commun. 2021; 3(4):fcab254.. View in PubMed
• Validating Habitual and Goal-Directed Decision-Making Performance Online in Healthy Older Adults. Front Aging Neurosci. 2021; 13:702810.. View in PubMed
• Can we predict real-time fMRI neurofeedback learning success from pretraining brain activity? Hum Brain Mapp. 2020 10 01; 41(14):3839-3854.. View in PubMed
• Applications of Head-Mounted Displays for Virtual Reality in Adult Physical Rehabilitation: A Scoping Review. Am J Occup Ther. 2020 Sep/Oct; 74(5):7405205060p1-7405205060p15.. View in PubMed
• A Virtual Reality Muscle-Computer Interface for Neurorehabilitation in Chronic Stroke: A Pilot Study. Sensors (Basel). 2020 Jul 04; 20(13).. View in PubMed
• Transfer of motor skill between virtual reality viewed using a head-mounted display and conventional screen environments. J Neuroeng Rehabil. 2020 04 10; 17(1):48.. View in PubMed
• ENIGMA and global neuroscience: A decade of large-scale studies of the brain in health and disease across more than 40 countries. Transl Psychiatry. 2020 03 20; 10(1):100.. View in PubMed
• Embodiment Is Related to Better Performance on a Brain-Computer Interface in Immersive Virtual Reality: A Pilot Study. Sensors (Basel). 2020 Feb 22; 20(4).. View in PubMed
• Differences in high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation over the motor hotspot versus the premotor cortex on motor network excitability. Sci Rep. 2019 11 26; 9(1):17605.. View in PubMed
• A comparison of automated lesion segmentation approaches for chronic stroke T1-weighted MRI data. Hum Brain Mapp. 2019 11 01; 40(16):4669-4685.. View in PubMed
• Gamma tACS over the temporal lobe increases the occurrence of Eureka! moments. Sci Rep. 2019 04 08; 9(1):5778.. View in PubMed
• Effects of a Brain-Computer Interface With Virtual Reality (VR) Neurofeedback: A Pilot Study in Chronic Stroke Patients. Front Hum Neurosci. 2019; 13:210.. View in PubMed
• Mindfulness Meditation Effects on Poststroke Spasticity: A Feasibility Study. J Evid Based Integr Med. 2019 Jan-Dec; 24:2515690X19855941.. View in PubMed
• Editorial: Collaborative Efforts for Understanding the Human Brain. Front Neuroinform. 2019; 13:38.. View in PubMed
• The LONI QC System: A Semi-Automated, Web-Based and Freely-Available Environment for the Comprehensive Quality Control of Neuroimaging Data. Front Neuroinform. 2019; 13:60.. View in PubMed
• Stroke atlas of the brain: Voxel-wise density-based clustering of infarct lesions topographic distribution. Neuroimage Clin. 2019; 24:101981.. View in PubMed
• Distributed cortical structural properties contribute to motor cortical excitability and inhibition. Brain Struct Funct. 2018 Nov; 223(8):3801-3812.. View in PubMed
• A large, open source dataset of stroke anatomical brain images and manual lesion segmentations. Sci Data. 2018 02 20; 5:180011.. View in PubMed
• Laterality of Poststroke Cortical Motor Activity during Action Observation Is Related to Hemispheric Dominance. Neural Plast. 2018; 2018:3524960.. View in PubMed
• Pipeline for Analyzing Lesions After Stroke (PALS). Front Neuroinform. 2018; 12:63.. View in PubMed
• Variable Neural Contributions to Explicit and Implicit Learning During Visuomotor Adaptation. Front Neurosci. 2018; 12:610.. View in PubMed
• A Preliminary Comparison of Motor Learning Across Different Non-invasive Brain Stimulation Paradigms Shows No Consistent Modulations. Front Neurosci. 2018; 12:253.. View in PubMed
• Plasticity of Sensorimotor Networks: Multiple Overlapping Mechanisms. Neuroscientist. 2017 04; 23(2):185-196.. View in PubMed
• Promoting Translational Research Among Movement Science, Occupational Science, and Occupational Therapy. J Mot Behav. 2017 Jan-Feb; 49(1):1-7.. View in PubMed
• The Effects of Sensory Manipulations on Motor Behavior: From Basic Science to Clinical Rehabilitation. J Mot Behav. 2017 Jan-Feb; 49(1):67-77.. View in PubMed
• Anatomical Parameters of tDCS to Modulate the Motor System after Stroke: A Review. Front Neurol. 2017; 8:29.. View in PubMed
• RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH AND PARTICULATE MATTER OVER SINGAPORE: EFFECTS OF AEROSOL VERTICAL DISTRIBUTIONS. Aerosol Air Qual Res. 2016 Nov 01; 16(11):2818-2830.. View in PubMed
• Cholinesterase inhibitory activity of isoquinoline alkaloids from three Cryptocarya species (Lauraceae). Bioorg Med Chem. 2016 09 15; 24(18):4464-4469.. View in PubMed
• Natural cholinesterase inhibitors from Myristica cinnamomea King. Bioorg Med Chem Lett. 2016 08 01; 26(15):3785-92.. View in PubMed
• Improving Motor Corticothalamic Communication After Stroke Using Real-Time fMRI Connectivity-Based Neurofeedback. Neurorehabil Neural Repair. 2016 08; 30(7):671-5.. View in PubMed
• Hyaluronidase Inhibitory Activity of Pentacylic Triterpenoids from Prismatomeris tetrandra (Roxb.) K. Schum: Isolation, Synthesis and QSAR Study. Int J Mol Sci. 2016 Feb 14; 17(2):143.. View in PubMed
• Brainhack: a collaborative workshop for the open neuroscience community. Gigascience. 2016; 5:16.. View in PubMed
• Natural indole butyrylcholinesterase inhibitors from Nauclea officinalis. Phytomedicine. 2015 Jan 15; 22(1):45-8.. View in PubMed
• Subditine, a new monoterpenoid indole alkaloid from bark of Nauclea subdita (Korth.) Steud. induces apoptosis in human prostate cancer cells. PLoS One. 2014; 9(2):e87286.. View in PubMed
• Non-invasive brain stimulation in neurorehabilitation: local and distant effects for motor recovery. Front Hum Neurosci. 2014; 8:378.. View in PubMed
• Modulating the motor system by action observation after stroke. Stroke. 2013 Aug; 44(8):2247-53.. View in PubMed
• Experience with an amputee modulates one’s own sensorimotor response during action observation. Neuroimage. 2013 Apr 01; 69:138-45.. View in PubMed
• Exploring the neural correlates of visual creativity. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2013 Apr; 8(4):475-80.. View in PubMed
• Both novelty and expertise increase action observation network activity. Front Hum Neurosci. 2013; 7:541.. View in PubMed
• Understanding otherness: the neural bases of action comprehension and pain empathy in a congenital amputee. Cereb Cortex. 2012 Apr; 22(4):811-9.. View in PubMed
• Familiarity modulates mirror neuron and mentalizing regions during intention understanding. Hum Brain Mapp. 2011 Nov; 32(11):1986-97.. View in PubMed
• Who’s afraid of the boss: cultural differences in social hierarchies modulate self-face recognition in Chinese and Americans. PLoS One. 2011 Feb 16; 6(2):e16901.. View in PubMed

• Winstein, Carolee
• Thompson, Paul
• Toga, Arthur
• Schweighofer, Nicolas
• Lyden, Patrick
• Peterson, Bradley
• Towfighi, Amytis
• Fisher, Beth
• Zada, Gabriel
• Finley, James
• Sanossian, Nerses
• Cohen-Gadol, Aaron
• Jahanshad, Neda
• Roll, Shawn