Functional magnetic resonance imaging providing the brain effect mechanism of acupuncture and moxibustion treatment for depression

Kelvin K L Wong; Jinping Xu; Cang Chen; Dhanjoo Ghista; Hong Zhao

doi:10.3389/fneur.2023.1151421

Functional magnetic resonance imaging providing the brain effect mechanism of acupuncture and moxibustion treatment for depression

Front Neurol. 2023 Mar 21:14:1151421. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2023.1151421. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Kelvin K L Wong¹, Jinping Xu¹, Cang Chen¹, Dhanjoo Ghista¹, Hong Zhao²

Affiliations

¹ The Research Center for Medical AI, Institute of Biomedical and Health Engineering, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
² Acupuncture and Moxibustion Department, Luohu District Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shenzhen, China.

Abstract

The efficacy of acupuncture and moxibustion in the treatment of depression has been fully recognized internationally. However, its central mechanism is still not developed into a unified standard, and it is generally believed that the central mechanism is regulation of the cortical striatum thalamic neural pathway of the limbic system. In recent years, some scholars have applied functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the central mechanism and the associated brain effects of acupuncture and moxibustion treatment for depression. This study reviews the acupuncture and moxibustion treatment of depression from two aspects: (1) fMRI study of the brain function related to the acupuncture treatment of depression: different acupuncture and moxibustion methods are summarized, the fMRI technique is elaborately explained, and the results of fMRI study of the effects of acupuncture are analyzed in detail, and (2) fMRI associated "brain functional network" effects of acupuncture and moxibustion on depression, including the effects on the hippocampus, the amygdala, the cingulate gyrus, the frontal lobe, the temporal lobe, and other brain regions. The study of the effects of acupuncture on brain imaging is not adequately developed and still needs further improvement and development. The brain function networks associated with the acupuncture treatment of depression have not yet been adequately developed to provide a scientific and standardized mechanism of the effects of acupuncture. For this purpose, this study analyzes in-depth the clinical studies on the treatment of anxiety and depression by acupuncture and moxibustion, by depicting how the employment of fMRI technology provides significant imaging changes in the brain regions. Therefore, the study also provides a reference for future clinical research on the treatment of anxiety and depression.

Keywords: acupuncture; brain activity; brain functional network; depression; functional magnetic resonance imaging; moxibustion; qi inner energy.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFC1703600) and study on the effect mechanism of acupuncture-moxibustion in dominant diseases (2017YFC1703606).