The Influnence Of Electro-acupuncture To Amygdala Functional Connectivity Network Of The Patients With Post-traumatic Stress Disorder On Resting-fMRI

Aim:In this study, we treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients as carriers and establish healthy subjects as controls, to explore the influence of the amygdala resting-state Functional Connectivity (rs-FC) Network involved in electro-acupuncture on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) for PTSD, which can provide more sufficient basis for acupuncture used in the treatment of PTSD in clinical.Methods:1. Fifteen patients with PTSD and Fifteen healthy subjects are as the research object,accept the resting-state fMRI scans,then analysing the results with bilateral amygdala as ROIs for the whole brain and comparing the brain functional changes with the rsFC analysis methods.2. Fifteen patients with PTSD were received treatment of eletro-acupuncture three times per week, thirty-six times in total. Clinical evaluation and rs-fMRI scans were performed before and after treatment, functional changes of amygdala connectivity network before and after treatment as well as after treatment and healthy subjects were compared.Results:1. CAPS、SAS、SDS were statistical significance in comparison with before and after treatment of electro-acupuncture (p<0.05).2. Compared with the healthy subjects, the increased functional connectivity of patients in PTSD in bilateral amygdala with the whole brain are left middle temporal gyrus, left inferior temporal gyrus, right inferior temporal gyrus and the decreased functional connectivity with the whole brain are prefront lobal and right inferior frontal gyri(P<0.01, cluster>20).3. Compared with PTSD patients before treatment, the increased functional connectivity of patients in PTSD in bilateral amygdala with the whole brain are gyri orbitales, prefront lobal, and the decreased functional connectivity with the whole brain isthalamus.(P<0.01, cluster>20).4. Compared with the healthy subjects after treatment, the increased functional connectivity of PTSD patients in bilateral amygdala with the whole brain are left inferior temporal gyrus, right inferior temporal gyrus, and the decreased functional connectivity with the whole brain is left inferior frontal gyrus. (P<0.01, cluster>20).Conclusions:1. The electro-acupuncture is efficient to improve the clinical symptoms of PTSD.2. One of the possible central mechanisms of PTSD may be the increased functional connectivity in amygdala with temporal lobe and the decreased functional connectivity with frontal lobe.3. electro-acupuncture regulates amygdala function link network may throng enhancing the connection between the amygdale and frontal lobe and reducing the connection between the amygdale and Temporal lobe, which may be part of the central mechanism that using electro-acupuncture treat PTSD, thus improve the clinical symptoms of PTSD.