Consecutive Acupuncture Stimulations Lead to Significantly Decreased Neural Responses

Abstract Objective: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in combination with block design paradigms with consecutive acupuncture stimulations, has often been used to investigate the neural responses to acupuncture. In this study, we investigated whether previous acupuncture stimulations can affect brain activations of later acupuncture stimulations. Design: All subjects were measured twice in the same scanning session and a block design was used. Setting: The study was conducted at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Subjects: Fifteen (15) healthy right-handed male volunteers participated in the study. Intervention: The subjects received two acupuncture stimulations on BL62 (Shenmai) on the right foot with a time interval of 5 minutes. In addition, sham stimulations were tested with the same paradigm. Outcome measures: One-sample t tests were conducted in order to map the brain activations induced by the acupuncture and sham stimulations. Moreover, paired-sample t tests were conducted...