Prolonged repeated acupuncture stimulation induces habituation effects in pain-related brain areas: an FMRI study.

ABSTRACT: Most previous studies of brain responses to acupuncture were designed to investigate the acupuncture instant effect while the cumulative effect that should be more important in clinical practice has seldom been discussed. In this study, the neural basis of the acupuncture cumulative effect was analyzed. For this experiment, forty healthy volunteers were recruited, in which more than 40 minutes of repeated acupuncture stimulation was implemented at acupoint Zhusanli (ST36). Three runs of acupuncture fMRI datasets were acquired, with each run consisting of two blocks of acupuncture stimulation. Besides general linear model (GLM) analysis, the cumulative effects of acupuncture were analyzed with analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to find the association between the brain response and the cumulat

SUBMITTER: Li C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4018444 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature