The role of insula-cerebellum connection underlying aversive regulation with acupuncture.

Acupuncture at PC6 shows a consistently positive efficacy in nausea response suggested by consensus expert guidelines. Nausea encompasses aversive symptom, as well as strong emotional components. Disgust is a subjective emotion of uneasy commonly accompanying with a physiological response that is accompanied by strong visceral sensations (e.g., nausea). Understanding the brain circuitry by which acupuncture influences the disgust emotion may further elucidate the modulation effect of acupuncture on aversive experience. In the present study, a well-established aversive conditioning model on healthy subjects was combined with acupuncture intervention at PC6, as well as different acupoints (both local PC7 and distant GB37) as separate controls, to investigate the brain network involved aversive regulation with acupuncture. 48 healthy subjects were enrolled and randomized into four parallel groups: group 1 received disgust-induced (DI) stimuli only; group 2, 3, 4 received acupuncture at three single acupoint ...