Objective Neuro-plasticity is believed to be the main mechanism of stroke recovery.To examine the temporal process of the plasticity of brain during its recovery after ischemic stroke, the reorganization of neural connectivity around stroke core and other relevant brain regions has attracted extensively attention.In this study, the advance of neural connectivity and brain networks during the stroke recovery is first reviewed, then some results based on the clinical trials are introduced.Methods Neural connectivityanalysis is mainly based on multichannel EEG and 3D fMRI data from 42 stroke patients at resting state or under specific cognitive task.We analyzed the cortical connective network based on the phase synchronization (PS) analysis and partial directed coherence (PDC) of EEG/fMRI data.Results (1) By comparing the connectivity of stroke patients with that of control subjects (n=18), PS analysis shows that the inter-hemispheric PS of stroke patients was significantly suppressed compared with that of control subjects, and the level of PS between lesion and intact areas in the ipsilateral hemisphere was reduced significantly within seven days after the ischemic stroke, while the PS among intact areas increased to 114% of those of the control subjects.Furthermore, the patients with lower inter-hemispheric synchrony after stroke were observed to have a higher NIHSS two months after stroke.(2) Our preliminary study on stroke patients during performing mental rotation task (MRT) shows that the stroke patients respond slower and result in lower accurate rate compared with control subjects, and motor selection and execution might delay the accomplishment of MRT due to the motor impairment induced by stroke.Conclusion (1) The ischemic stroke broke down the cortical synchrony networks and affected large-scale neural communication of stroke patients.(2) Motor selection and execution is crucial for the hand function recovery of stroke patients and suggests to be the key cognitive process in mental practice training.