The Acupoint Specificity Of Vision-related Acupoints:An FMRI Study

Acupuncture, as a gem of Chinese Traditional culture, is an experience summary and great thought of the fighting of Chinese against diseases. It has been popularized in China and used to treat many kinds of diseases. Moreover, it has been accepted by a growing number of western countries some of which have approved it legally. The number of physicians involved in acupuncture has been increasing year by year. However, many western countries as well as some Asia countries still question the scientificity of acupuncture for the inexplicitness of the mechanism of acupuncture which restricts the international popularization and development of acupuncture.With the development of modern medical imaging technology, especially functional magnetic resonance (fMRI), the neuroimaging study of the mechanism of acupuncture is becoming much more convenient than ever before. fMRI has been widely used in the exploration of human brain's functions for it's characteristic of non-invasive and high in spatial resolution. The research of the mechanism of acupuncture has been conducted extensively and great progress has been made. However, whether acupoint specificity exists is still not clear and not a common consensus has been reached.This paper focuses on two main researches. In the first study, we adopted an acupoint which is used to treat for eye diseased frequently in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and its corresponding sham point. Independent Component Analysis (ICA), a data driven method, was used to analysis each epoch of the acupuncture phases. The result indicates that stimulation of acupoint GB37 induces great activation of vision-related brain cortexes, which support the viewpoint of the existence of acupoint specificity of GB37. In the second study, electro-acupuncture stimulation was performed at GB37 and KI8 which is used to treat physical pain in TCM. The result also shows that vision-related brain cortexes, such as occipital cortex, are significantly energy varied when GB37 is stimulated. While the stimulation at KI8 causes great energy variations at dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, insula and anterior cingulate gyrus, etc. The result verifies the existence of acupoint specificity of GB37 again and provides evidence for that of KI8.