Neuroimaging Study On The Functional Connectivity Modulation By Acupuncture In Bell's Palsy Patients

Bell's palsy (BP), an acute unilateral facial paralysis, is a frequent facial movement dysfunction caused by the impaired facial nerve. Acupuncture, a traditional Chinese medicine, has been verified to have a beneficial effect on BP treatment in the last few years by many clinical studies. However, the mechanism of acupuncture treatment for BP has not been completely elucidated so far. With the development of modern medical technology, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a noninvasive brain imaging technique, is widely used to study the effect of acupuncture on the brain. Functional connectivity (FC) analysis is a conventional analytical method of fMRI. It can reflect the synchronization degree of neuronal activity, and the degree of information transference and collaboration between various brain areas. Existing neuroimaging studies showed that acupuncture could change FCs in BP patients. However, it was unclear whether these FC changes by acupuncture would be related to the rehabilitation of BP disease. Therefore, the study presented here used FC analysis to investigate the FC modulation by acupuncture in BP patients and its relationship with rehabilitation.This thesisstudied the abnormal FC modulation by acupuncture on LI4 in the early state of BP patients. A total of 22 healthy volunteers and 17 right unilateral BP patients were recruited. The fMRI data before acupuncture, during acupuncture and after acupuncture were acquired in this study. Using generalized linear model,17 seed regions were selected based on the statistical activation maps of acupuncture needling response and BP patients'facial motor task. The FCs of these seed regions were computed using Pearson correlation analysis. By comparing BP-induced with acupuncture-induced FC changes in the patients,11 abnormal FCs that could be changed by acupuncture were extracted, which indicated that acupuncture could modulate the abnormal FCs in BP patients.Furthermore, this thesis explored the relationship between abnormal FC modulation by acupuncture and rehabilitation. The strengths of these selected FCs at various stages were analyzed subsequently. The result showed that the changes of FC induced by acupuncture were consistent with the ones during rehabilitation. The comparisons of the FCs between post-and pre-acupuncture in the healthy group and recovery group indicated that acupuncture could specifically modulate the abnormal FCs in BP patients. This research showed that abnormal FC modulation by acupuncture may be beneficial for the recovery from the disease, which could help revealing the underlying mechanism of acupuncture treatment for BP.