Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States.
Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States; Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States.
Neuroimage. 2020 Nov 1;221:117176. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117176. Epub 2020 Jul 17.
Acupuncture and imagery interventions for pain management have a long history. The present study comparatively investigated whether acupuncture and video-guided acupuncture imagery treatment (VGAIT, watching a video of acupuncture on the participant's own body while imagining it being applied) could modulate brain regional connectivity to produce analgesic effects. The study also examined whether pre-intervention brain functional and structural features could be used to predict the magnitude of analgesic effects. Twenty-four healthy participants were recruited and received four different interventions (real acupuncture, sham acupuncture, VGAIT, and VGAIT control) in random order using a cross-over design. Pain thresholds and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data were collected before and after each intervention. We first compared the modulatory effects of real acupuncture and VGAIT on intra- and inter-regional intrinsic brain connectivity and found that real acupuncture decreased regional homogeneity (ReHo) and functional connectivity (FC) in sensorimotor areas, whereas VGAIT increased ReHo in basal ganglia (BG) (i.e., putamen) and FC between the BG subcortical network and default mode network. The altered ReHo and FC were associated with changes in pain threshold after real acupuncture and VGAIT, respectively. A multimodality fusion approach with pre-intervention ReHo and gray matter volume (GMV) as features was used to explore the brain profiles underlying individual variability of pain threshold changes by real acupuncture and VGAIT. Variability in acupuncture responses was associated with ReHo and GMV in BG, whereas VGAIT responses were associated with ReHo and GMV in the anterior insula. These results suggest that, through different pathways, both real acupuncture and VGAIT can modulate brain systems to produce analgesic effects.
针刺和意象干预在疼痛管理中已有悠久的历史。本研究比较了针刺和视频引导的针刺意象治疗(VGAIT,观看自身身体上的针刺视频并想象其被应用)是否可以调节大脑区域连接以产生镇痛效果。该研究还探讨了是否可以使用干预前的大脑功能和结构特征来预测镇痛效果的大小。我们招募了 24 名健康参与者,并使用交叉设计随机接受了四种不同的干预措施(真实针刺、假针刺、VGAIT 和 VGAIT 对照)。在每次干预前后收集疼痛阈值和磁共振成像(MRI)数据。我们首先比较了真实针刺和 VGAIT 对大脑内在区域和区域间连接的调节作用,发现真实针刺降低了感觉运动区的局部一致性(ReHo)和功能连接(FC),而 VGAIT 增加了基底节(BG)(即壳核)的 ReHo 和 BG 皮质下网络与默认模式网络之间的 FC。改变的 ReHo 和 FC 与真实针刺和 VGAIT 后疼痛阈值的变化有关。通过使用干预前的 ReHo 和灰质体积(GMV)作为特征的多模态融合方法,我们探索了个体对真实针刺和 VGAIT 引起的疼痛阈值变化的大脑特征。针刺反应的可变性与 BG 中的 ReHo 和 GMV 有关,而 VGAIT 反应与前岛叶中的 ReHo 和 GMV 有关。这些结果表明,通过不同的途径,真实针刺和 VGAIT 都可以调节大脑系统以产生镇痛效果。