Effect Of Acupuncture On Motion Sickness And The Relationship With Cortical Thickness And Brain Functional Connectivity

Motion sickness is a common disease.At present,scopolamine is the first-line drugs for preventing motion sickness.But it can produce greater side effects,such as dry mouth and lethargy.Therefore,looking for an effective,simple and convenient treatment for treating motion sickness is gaining more and more attention.Acupuncture,an old medical technology derived from China,has a long history of thousands of years and has advantages of being safety and less side effects.Several previous studies have evaluated the efficacy of acupuncture on motion sickness,but the results remain controversial.Moreover,the efficacy to acupuncture often shows marked individual differences.Up to now,the mechanism of individual differences in acupuncture efficacy,especially for treating motion sickness is still unclear.Therefore,the present study aimed to evaluate the effect of acupuncture on motion sickness and to investigate the roles of cortical thickness and cortical functional connectivity in the individual differences of acupuncture modulation on motion sickness.The optokinetic rotating drum was used to simulate the occurrence of motion sickness.The main contents were as follows.(1)44 Subjects meeting the conditions were divided into electro-acupuncture pretreatment group,plaster pretreatment group and control group randomly.The nausea symptoms,autonomic nervous system and stress reaction among three groups were analyzed.The results showed that electro-acupuncture could alleviate the nausea symptoms,increase parasympathetic activity and reduce sympathetic activity.And the effect of electro-acupuncture on high-frequency heart rate variability was better than that of in plaster group.(2)The correlation between the effect of electro-acupuncture on nausea symptom and the cortical thickness,brain functional connection were examined.The result showed that the cortical thickness of the left inferior temporal gyrus,right superior frontal gyrus negatively correlated with the effect of electro-acupuncture on nausea symptoms.And the functional connection between the left inferior temporal gyrus and right cerebellum crus,right parietal operculum and right supplementary motor area negatively correlated with the effect of electro-acupuncture on nausea symptoms as well.(3)The correlation between the effect of electro-acupuncture on high-frequency heart rate variability and the cortical thickness,brain functional connection were assessed.Correlation analysis revealed significantly negative correlation between the cortical thickness of default mode network(left anterior cingulate gyrus,left superior parietal lobule,left middle front gyrus,left precuneus),the primary somatic motor cortex(right precentral gyrus)and the effect of electro-acupuncture on high-frequency heart rate variability.And the functional connection between medial frontal cortex and right pallidum negatively correlated with the effect of electro-acupuncture on high-frequency heart rate variability.The functional connection between left supramarginal gyrus and left superior temporal gyrus,left supramarginal gyrus and right superior temporal gyrus positive correlated with the effect of electro-acupuncture on high-frequency heart rate variability.These results in the thesis showed that acupuncture had a certain effect on visual motion-induced motion sickness.And the modulation of acupuncture on autonomic nervous activity was better than scopolamine’s effect.The individual differences in the modulation of electro-acupuncture on nausea system and abnormal parasympathetic activity were closely associated with specific brain structure and function.In conclusion,our finding provided new evidence for the treatment of acupuncture on motion sickness,and improved our understanding of the mechanism of the individual differences in electro-acupuncture on motion sickness.