Comparison of visual cortical activations induced by electro-acupuncture at vision and nonvision-related acupoints

In the current study, we investigated whether or not stimulation at vision and nonvision-related acupoints was able to induce similarity in the time domain, although stimulation at different acupoints could produce similar spatial distributions. This phenomenon still remains uncertain and contradictory. We introduced a novel experimental paradigm using a modified non-repeated event-related (NRER) design, and utilized the methods of independent component analysis (ICA) combined with seed correlated functional connectivity analysis to locate visual cortical activations and to study their temporal characteristics during electro-acupuncture (EAS) at vision-related acupoint GB 37 and nonvision-related acupoint KI 8. Results showed that strong activations were present in the visual cortical areas (BA 17/18/19) at both acupoints, but temporal correlation analysis indicated that they were modulated in opposite directions during the resting state after acupuncture. Our results revealed that acupuncture at vision and nonvision-related acupoints can induce similar activations in spatial distribution but different modulation effects temporally.