Elsevier

Neuroscience Letters

Volume 354, Issue 1, 2 January 2004, Pages 50-53
Neuroscience Letters

Evidence from brain imaging with fMRI supporting functional specificity of acupoints in humans

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2003.09.080Get rights and content

Abstract

We tested whether the stimulation of acupoints in the same spinal segments could induce different central responses with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. Stimulation of acupoints ST36/SP6 (Zusanli/Sanyinjiao) or GB34/BL57 (Yanglingquan/Chengshan) both activated primary and secondary somatosensory area, insula, ventral thalamus, parietal Brodmann Area 40, temporal lobe, putamen, and cerebellum, while de-activated amygdala. Nevertheless, ST36/SP6 stimulation specifically activated orbital frontal cortex and de-activated hippocampus. Alternatively, stimulation of GB34/BL57 activated dorsal thalamus and inhibited those of primary motor area and premotor cortex. Thus, stimulation of acupoints in the same spinal segments induced distinct though overlapped cerebral response patterns, which indicated the existence of acupoint specificity.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 30170307), the National Basic Research Program of China (G1999054000), the 211 Neuroscience Project from the Ministry of Education of China, and a startup grant for young scientists from the 985 project of Peking University.

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