Study On Acupuncture Effect Based On Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Acupuncture is a treasure of the excellent traditional science and culture ofChina.It has made important contributions to the prosperousness of the Chinesemedicine industry due to its significant curative effect in treatment and extensiveappliaction. It is reported in the theory of traditional Chinese medicine and verified inclinical studies that acupuncture can produce sustained effect. The acupuncture effect,which refers to the influence of acupuncture stimulus on the physiological andpathological processes, activates or mediates inherent regulation system bynon-specific acupuncture stimulus and then makes the body recovered from imbalanceand disorders.Currently, researches related to acupuncture effect can hardly breakthrough the limitation of experience medicine, as well as objectively elucidating theeffectiveness and mechanism that restricts the further promotion and application ofacupuncture.fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) not only provides a conveniencefor studying acupuncture effect due to its noninvasiveness but also makes it possibleto explore the interactions of meridian-brain-viscera. It has become a powerful toolfor investigating the acupuncture-induced hemodynamic response in human brain withthe advantages of noninvasiveness, radiation-free, higher temporal and spatialresolution.Data collected with fMRI reflects acupuncture-induced activities of differentcerebral cortex, which are the superposition of various independent signals generatedby different brain activities. We can obtain the real physiological signal if theindependent sources are separated. It facilitates the understanding of the brain activityand the mechanism on the central nervous system. ICA (independent componentanalysis) is an effective method to solve the above problem. It does not require timeseries of the experimental design with prior knowledge, therefore has a broadperspectives in application. The main research contents and results are as follows:(1) The basic principles and applications of widespread used fMRI dataprocessing software SPM(statistical parametric mapping) is discussed, the methodusing the generalized linear model (GLM) to build statistical parametric mapping isalso introduced, finally the statistical analysis and comparison of fMRI data acquiredin manual acupuncture (MA) and electroacupuncture (EA) experiment is fininshed.(2) The principle of ICA and the popular group independent component analysis (GroupICA) processing multiple subjects are introduced and applied to process thecollected data. Default mode network is successfully extracted respectively in twomodatilities and further analyzed.