Enhanced Functional Connectivity between the Bilateral Primary Motor Cortices after Acupuncture at Yanglingquan (GB34) in Right-Hemispheric Subcortical Stroke Patients: A Resting-State fMRI Study

Abstract

Increasing neuroimaging researches in stroke rehabilitation had revealed the neural mechanisms of rehabilitation therapy. However, little was known about the neural mechanisms of acupuncture therapy in subcortical stroke patients. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes of functional connectivity (FC) between the bilateral primary motor cortices (M1s) after acupuncture intervention in right subcortical stroke patients. Twenty right-hemispheric subcortical stroke patients and 20 healthy subjects were recruited to undergo one functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. The scanning consisted of resting-state fMRI before and after needling at Yanglinquan (GB34), and task-evoked fMRI. The most significant active point during the left passive thumb-to-index task was chosen as the seed point. The seed-based FC analysis of the bilateral M1s was performed. Stroke patients revealed decreased FC between the bilateral M1s compared with healthy subjects, and the decreased FC was significantly enhanced after acupuncture at GB34. Acupuncture could increase the intrinsically decreased FC between the bilateral M1s which provided further insight into the neural mechanisms of acupuncture for motor function recovery in stroke patients.

Longitudinal Brain Functional Connectivity Changes of the Cortical Motor-Related Network in Subcortical Stroke Patients with Acupuncture Treatment

“…Acupuncture therapy showed a more significant recovery than only medicine therapy in ischemic stroke. Abundant previous clinical researches have showed that acupuncture was beneficial for stroke rehabilitation [ 2 , 19 , 20 , 28 ]. In our experience design, the patients with a combining therapy of acupuncture and drug treatment demonstrated a recovery of the brain FC pattern of the motor network and their neurological function compared with the patients in the CG.…”

“…However, the treatment effect on the intrahemispheric FC value of the connectivity pathway between left PMd and left PMv showed a significant difference between both patient groups. Acupuncture might modulate regional excitability through influencing the activity of neural synapsis [ 19 , 20 ]. This effect is more significant in the left hemisphere because the lesions of our data were all located in the left hemisphere.…”

“…Our present results showed that only pretreatment FC between bilateral M1 showed a significant correlation with the rate of NDS changes in all stroke patients. The role of the interhemispheric M1-M1 connectivity has been investigated by most previous studies [ 14 , 19 , 23 , 33 ]. The correlation result in the present study does not only confirm its important role for the FC between bilateral M1 after stroke but also extended its role as a biomarker to predict the treatment outcome.…”

“…Most of these previous imaging studies focus on brain organization after stroke. Only a few studies focus on the acupuncture treatment effect, such as the changes in the ipsilesional primary motor cortex (M1) area after stroke with acupuncture intervention [ 19 , 20 ]. Acupuncture intervention effect on the functional connectivity (FC) patterns of the whole motor-related network is still unclear in stroke patients.…”

Effect of Electro-Acupuncture and Moxibustion on Brain Connectivity in Patients with Crohn’s Disease: A Resting-State fMRI Study

“…It has been used to evaluate the synchronization of neuronal activity in varied brain regions to study brain function, and identify functional networks associated with a seed region (Biswal et al, 1995 ; Fox and Raichle, 2007 ; Bullmore and Sporns, 2009 ). This method has also been used to investigate the mechanisms underlying several diseases and acupuncture and moxibustion treatment (Chen et al, 2015 ; Deng et al, 2016 ; Wang et al, 2016 ; Ning et al, 2017 ). This study aimed to investigate the effects of electro-acupuncture or moxibustion treatment on rsFC using bilateral hippocampus as seeds, to compare the differences in brain response between the two approaches, and to further explore the correlation between these changes and clinical outcomes in CD patients experiencing remission.…”