Guangdong-Hongkong-Macau Institute of CNS Regeneration and Ministry of Education CNS Regeneration Collaborative Joint Laboratory, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China; Center for Language and Brain, Shenzhen Institute of Neuroscience, Shenzhen, China.
The First School of Clinical Medicine, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China.
Brain Lang. 2021 Apr;215:104920. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2021.104920. Epub 2021 Feb 6.
Acupuncture, taking the advantage of modality-specific neural pathways, has shown promising results in the treatment of brain disorders that affect different modalities such as pain and vision. However, the precise underlying mechanisms of within-modality neuromodulation of acupoints on human high-order cognition remain largely unknown. In the present study, we used a non-invasive and easy-operating method, focused ultrasound, to stimulate two language-relevant acupoints, namely GB39 (Xuanzhong) and SJ8 (Sanyangluo), of thirty healthy adults. The effect of focused ultrasound stimulation (FUS) on brain activation was examined by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We found that stimulating GB39 and SJ8 by FUS evoked overlapping but distinct brain activation patterns. Our findings provide a major step toward within-modality (in this case, language) acupoint-brain (acubrain) mapping and shed light on to the potential use of FUS as a personalized treatment option for brain disorders that affect high-level cognitive functions.
针刺利用特定模态的神经通路，在治疗影响不同模态（如疼痛和视觉）的脑疾病方面显示出了有前景的结果。然而，对于穴位在人类高级认知中的模态内神经调节的确切潜在机制仍知之甚少。在本研究中，我们使用了一种非侵入性和易于操作的方法，即聚焦超声，刺激三十名健康成年人的两个与语言相关的穴位，即 GB39（悬钟）和 SJ8（三阳络）。通过功能磁共振成像（fMRI）检查了聚焦超声刺激（FUS）对大脑激活的影响。我们发现，FUS 刺激 GB39 和 SJ8 会引起重叠但不同的大脑激活模式。我们的发现为模态内（在这种情况下是语言）穴位-大脑（acubrain）映射迈出了重要一步，并为 FUS 作为治疗影响高级认知功能的脑疾病的个性化治疗选择提供了可能性。
