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• Clinical Article •
Heterogeneous neural pathways underlying acupuncture revealed by multivariate granger causality analyses
SUN Chuan-zhu  BAI Li-jun  NIU Xuan  CHEN Hong-yan  CHEN Peng  ZHANG Ming  LAO Li-xing 

DOI:10.3969/j.issn.1674-8034.2014.06.004.


[Abstract] Objectives: Although accumulating evidence has demonstrated a wide range of cortico-subcortical networks underlying acute effects of acupuncture, less is understood regarding how and by what neural pathways these brain areas interact. We have recently proposed that acupuncture is a slow-acting agent and can induce specific patterns of dynamic CNS activities. Implicit in this evidence was the prediction that the reconfiguration of brain networks underlying both acute and sustained effects of acupuncture may elucidate its overall functional specificity.Materials and Methods: We address the idea directly by adopting a non-repeated event-related design paradigm and multivariate Granger causality analysis (mGCA).Results: We found that brain areas were only sparsely causal connected at early acupuncture needling stage, mainly including ascending path from the thalamus as well as top-down control signals from frontal cortices to nociceptive information processing areas. As time prolonged (sustained effect), more extensive regions integrated into a dense, causally interconnected network only following acupuncture at ST36 but not nonacupoint. Additionally, this reorganization of wide brain networks seemed to be evolved from the resting state.Conclusions: These findings highlighted that the specific effect of acupuncture may involve the integration of recurrent information flow among multi-levels of brain networks.
[Keywords] Acupuncture；Time-dependent activities；Heterogeneous neural pathways；Magnetic resonance imaging

SUN Chuan-zhu The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering, Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

BAI Li-jun * The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering, Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

NIU Xuan Department of Imaging, the First Affiliated Hospital of Medical College, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710061, China

CHEN Hong-yan Department of Radiology, Capital University of Medical Science, Beijing 100050, China

CHEN Peng Acupuncture Center, Beijing TCM Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University, Beijing 100010, China

ZHANG Ming Acupuncture Center, Beijing TCM Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University, Beijing 100010, China

LAO Li-xing School of Chinese Medicine, University of Hongkong, Hongkong, China; Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Maryland Baltimore, School of Medicine, Baltimore 21201, U S A

*Correspondence to: Bai LJ, E-mail: bailj4152615@gmail.com

Conflicts of interest   None.

Received  2014-09-16
Accepted  2014-10-20
DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1674-8034.2014.06.004
DOI:10.3969/j.issn.1674-8034.2014.06.004.

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