Acupuncture Acupoint Treatment Of Mental Consciousness Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Of The Disease Mechanism

Acupuncture and Moxibustion, which have more than 2000 years history, are one of the most important components of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Nowadays, more and more medical workers bury themselves into the mechanism research of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, and lots of modern equipments and instruments are involved. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), especially functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), which is non-invasive and accurate, is attached importance to research workers.It has been proved that acupuncture on PC7 can treat mental diseases by the thousands of years'clinical practice. Based on TCM theory, mental diseases mostly affect heart. Pericardium is out of the heat and can been invaded by evil pathogen instead of heat. PC7 is the source point of pericardium meridian, and is one of the main points treating mental problems. The theory and clinical practices have been proved that PC7 is good at treating psychological problems, but there are not enough evidences on western medicine. Therefore, I want to find some central nervous system mechanism of PC7 treating mental diseases by fmri.Purpose: to find central nervous system mechanism of PC7 treating mental diseases by fmri.Method: 8 healthy volunteers were enrolled to be subjects, including 4 male and 4 female. The average age is 24.2. At first, each subject was instructed of some basic acupuncture and MRI knowledge, which could reduce the adverse infection from bad emotion like fear. There were 2 groups, acupuncture group and pricking group. All 8 subjects would take both acupuncture and pricking manipulation. The stimulating patterns are same, which is"REST– STIMULATE– REST– STIMULATE - TEST". At the end of the experiment, all the subjects would be questioned of the sensation they got. The fMRI data was analyzed with SPM2 software package which is based on MATLAB7.Result: The activation areas of acupuncture group are mainly on frontal lobe, temporal lobe and postcentral gyrus. Ones of pricking group are primarily on frontal lobe and postcentral gyrus. However, the range and degree of pricking group are much smaller than acupuncture group.Analysis: Based on the domestic and overseas research literatures of mental diseases forming mechanism in recent years, I found these diseases were very complicated, and plenty of factors could result in mental problem. However, it is sure that the damage or hypofunction or inadequate activation of frontal lobe and temporal lobe have close correlation with mental diseases. So the hypothesis can be got, that is"one of the mechanisms of PC7 treating mental diseases may be that the frontal and temporal lobe can be activated by stimulating PC7". Analyzing the cerebral activation area of both acupuncture and pricking groups, I found the primary activation areas were similar to each other, and the differences were the activating range and degree. Because the stimulating pattern of control group is close to acupressure in clinic, therefore, this result can prove the rationality of TCM theory about skin and meridian.This thesis can be divided into 2 parts. The first part includes three chapters, which are mainly talking about the PC7, mental diseases and fMRI; the second part involves the experiment design, result and the analysis of cerebral activation area.