Hemiplegia Of Brain Function In Remodeling The Clinical And Fmri Studies Of The Acute Effects Of The Acupuncture

Acupuncture has been used for more than 2500 years to treat diseases in eastern countries. However, the mechanism of immediate effect of acupuncture hasn't been made clear now.We have reviewed the literature about acupuncture and stroke, the therapy of study on the mechanism of acupuncture and the cerebral function imaging.The aim of this study was to investigate the immediate effect of scalp needle on paralysis. Based on clinical investigation, we use MRI to scan the brain of the patients when we treat them by scalp needles. The experimental design consisted of two parts of positive movement and scalp acupuncture, in which functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) were collected within 204 seconds. fMRI was performed on a 1.5 Tesla Siemens Novus scanner (Siemens, Germany) using EPI-BOLD imaging methods with TR/TE=2000/50ms. 20 slices were acquired axially, covering the entire brain with the following resolution parameters: matrix=64 x 64, FOV = 24cm, Slice thickness = 6mm. T1-weighted anatomic images were acquired for Talairach transformation and functional mapping. Analysis of the imaging data was performed in SPM2.As far as we know, it is the first time that we use fMRI to investigate the brain activation of scalp acupuncture on stroke. The results showed that the brain activation and deaction areas of movement and acupuncturing are different, and BA6,10 are founded in the activated and deactivated areas. This tells us the function of scalp acupuncture is completed by the cerebral cortex and the subcortex.Integrating traditional acupuncture therapy with modern fMRI therapy; modern evaluation method appraise effect of acupuncture and movement rehabilitation therapy; selecting DǐngnièQiánxiéxiàn manipulation for the first time in the aspect of acupoints combination and acupuncture manipulation; integrate group research with case analyse in aspect of the design of clinical research from the point of view.In the future, the research of mechanism on the occurrence and recovery of paralysis, and the evaluation of the therapeutic effect of acupuncture, movement task should be combined with imaging study on brain function with acupuncture on acupoints, and the temporal effect and fMRI are adopted as the approaches in the assessment to evaluate poststroke paralysis in multiple time-spots and dynamically.We also expect the study can help us to discuss the mechanism of cerebral function remodeling in the diseases like hemiplegia, dementia etc. Of course, Further studies are needed to verify our findings.