Abstract
Acupuncture is a therapeutic treatment that is defined as the insertion of needles
into the body at specific points (ie, acupoints). Advances in functional neuroimaging
have made it possible to study brain responses to acupuncture; however, previous studies
have mainly concentrated on acupoint specificity. We wanted to focus on the functional
brain responses that occur because of needle insertion into the body. An activation
likelihood estimation meta-analysis was carried out to investigate common characteristics
of brain responses to acupuncture needle stimulation compared to tactile stimulation.
A total of 28 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, which consisted of 51
acupuncture and 10 tactile stimulation experiments, were selected for the meta-analysis.
Following acupuncture needle stimulation, activation in the sensorimotor cortical
network, including the insula, thalamus, anterior cingulate cortex, and primary and
secondary somatosensory cortices, and deactivation in the limbic-paralimbic neocortical
network, including the medial prefrontal cortex, caudate, amygdala, posterior cingulate
cortex, and parahippocampus, were detected and assessed. Following control tactile
stimulation, weaker patterns of brain responses were detected in areas similar to
those stated above. The activation and deactivation patterns following acupuncture
stimulation suggest that the hemodynamic responses in the brain simultaneously reflect
the sensory, cognitive, and affective dimensions of pain.
Perspective
This article facilitates a better understanding of acupuncture needle stimulation
and its effects on specific activity changes in different brain regions as well as
its relationship to the multiple dimensions of pain. Future studies can build on this
meta-analysis and will help to elucidate the clinically relevant therapeutic effects
of acupuncture.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 07, 2013
Footnotes
Supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (No. 2011-0009913 and No. 2005-0049404).
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Identification
Copyright
© 2013 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
