It is good to see that stroke, and in particular stroke rehabilitation, is losing its Cinderella status in the world of neurology. In this issue, Cauraugh and Kim (p 000) present the results of some recent work on the rehabilitation of arm function in chronic stroke patients.¹ This work touches on several areas of interest to both clinicians and basic scientists.

Their work was in part motivated by suggestions in the motor learning literature that the repetitive practice of the same action (“blocked” practice) may be inferior to practising different actions (“random” practice). If this were so, then it would have important implications for everyday …