Department

Health Promotion

Document Type

Article

Publication Source

Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Publication Date

2012-02-03

Volume

2012

Article Number

515893

Abstract

fMRI studies showed that acupuncture could induce hemodynamic changes in brain networks. Many of these studies focused on whether specific acupoints could activate specific brain regions and were often limited to manual acupuncture at acupoints on the limbs. In this fMRI study, we investigated acupuncture's modulation effects on brain functional networks by electroacupuncture (EA) at acupoints on the midline of abdomen. Acupoints Guanyuan (CV4) and Zhongwan (CV12) were stimulated in 21 healthy volunteers. The needling sensations, brain activation, and functional connectivity were studied. We found that the limbic-prefrontal functional network was deactivated by EA at CV4 and CV12. More importantly, the local functional connectivity was significantly changed during EA stimulation, and the change persisted during the period after the stimulation. Although minor differences existed, both acupoints similarly modulated the limbic-prefrontal functional network, which is overlapped with the functional circuits associated with emotional and cognitive regulation. Copyright © 2012 Jiliang Fang et al.

DOI

10.1155/2012/515893

Comments

© 2012 Jiliang Fang et al.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/515893

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