School of Acupuncture and Tuina, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China.
Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
Neural Plast. 2020 Mar 13;2020:7409417. doi: 10.1155/2020/7409417. eCollection 2020.
Acupuncture is an effective therapy for Internet addiction (IA). However, the underlying mechanisms of acupuncture in relieving compulsive Internet use remain unknown. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated the role of the ventral striatum (VS) in the progress of IA; hence, the aim of this study was to explore the effects of acupuncture on the resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) and relevant network of VS in IA.
Twenty-seven IA individuals and 30 demographically matched healthy control subjects (HCs) were recruited in this study. We acquired the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data in IA subjects before and after 40 days of acupuncture treatment. Seed-to-voxel and ROI-to-ROI analyses were applied to detect the rsFC alterations of the VS and related network in IA subjects and to investigate the modulation effect of acupuncture on the rsFC.
Compared with HCs, IA subjects exhibited enhanced rsFC of the right ventral rostral putamen (VRP) with the left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), premotor cortex (PMC), cerebellum, and right ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). In the network including these five ROIs, IA also showed increased ROI-to-ROI rsFC. Using a paired -test in IA subjects before and after 40 days of acupuncture, the increased ROI-to-ROI rsFC was decreased (normalized to HC) with acupuncture, including the rsFC of the right VRP with the left OFC, PMC, and cerebellum, and the rsFC of the left cerebellum with the left OFC, PMC, and right vmPFC. Furthermore, the change in rsFC strength between the right VRP and left cerebellum in IA individuals was found positively correlated with the Internet craving alleviation after acupuncture.
These findings verified the modulation effect of acupuncture on functional connectivity of reward and habit systems related to the VS in IA individuals, which might partly represent the underlying mechanisms of acupuncture on IA.
针刺是治疗网络成瘾（IA）的有效疗法。然而，针刺缓解强迫性网络使用的潜在机制尚不清楚。神经影像学研究表明腹侧纹状体（VS）在 IA 进展中的作用；因此，本研究旨在探讨针刺对 IA 患者 VS 静息态功能连接（rsFC）及相关网络的影响。
本研究纳入 27 名 IA 患者和 30 名年龄匹配的健康对照组（HCs）。我们在 IA 患者接受 40 天针刺治疗前后采集功能磁共振成像（fMRI）数据。采用种子点与体素和 ROI 与 ROI 分析方法，检测 IA 患者 VS 及其相关网络 rsFC 的改变，并探讨针刺对 rsFC 的调制作用。
与 HCs 相比，IA 患者右侧腹侧前纹状体（VRP）与左侧眶额皮层（OFC）、运动前皮层（PMC）、小脑和右侧腹内侧前额叶皮层（vmPFC）的 rsFC 增强。在包括这五个 ROI 的网络中，IA 患者的 ROI-ROI rsFC 也增加。在 IA 患者接受 40 天针刺前后的配对检验中，针刺后 ROI-ROI rsFC （与 HCs 归一化）增加，包括右侧 VRP 与左侧 OFC、PMC 和小脑的 rsFC，以及左侧小脑与左侧 OFC、PMC 和右侧 vmPFC 的 rsFC。此外，IA 个体中右侧 VRP 与左侧小脑之间 rsFC 强度的变化与针刺后网络成瘾渴求的减轻呈正相关。
这些发现验证了针刺对 IA 患者与 VS 相关的奖励和习惯系统功能连接的调制作用，这可能部分代表了针刺治疗 IA 的潜在机制。
