Oh Ju-Young, Lee Ye-Seul, Hwang Tae-Yeon, Cho Seong-Jin, Jang Jae-Hwan, Ryu Yeonhee, Park Hi-Joon
Department of Korean Medical Science, Graduate School of Korean Medicine, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea.
Studies of Translational Acupuncture Research (STAR), Acupuncture and Meridian Science Research Center (AMSRC), Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2022 Jun 14;14:885396. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.885396. eCollection 2022.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a multilayered progressive brain disease characterized by motor dysfunction and a variety of other symptoms. Although acupuncture has been used to ameliorate various symptoms of neurodegenerative disorders, including PD, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Here, we investigated the mechanism of acupuncture by revealing the effects of acupuncture treatment on brain neural responses and its functional connectivity in an animal model of PD. We observed that destruction of neuronal network between many brain regions in PD mice were reversed by acupuncture. Using machine learning analysis, we found that the key region associated with the improvement of abnormal behaviors might be related to the neural activity of M1, suggesting that the changes of c-Fos in M1 could predict the improvement of motor function induced by acupuncture treatment. In addition, acupuncture treatment was shown to significantly normalize the brain neural activity not only in M1 but also in other brain regions related to motor behavior (striatum, substantia nigra pars compacta, and globus pallidus) and non-motor symptoms (hippocampus, lateral hypothalamus, and solitary tract) of PD. Taken together, our results demonstrate that acupuncture treatment might improve the PD symptoms by normalizing the brain functional connectivity in PD mice model and provide new insights that enhance our current understanding of acupuncture mechanisms for non-motor symptoms.
帕金森病（PD）是一种具有多种症状的进行性脑部疾病，其特征为运动功能障碍以及其他多种症状。尽管针灸已被用于改善包括帕金森病在内的神经退行性疾病的各种症状，但其潜在机制尚不清楚。在此，我们通过揭示针刺治疗对帕金森病动物模型脑神经元反应及其功能连接的影响，来研究针灸的作用机制。我们观察到，帕金森病小鼠许多脑区之间的神经网络破坏通过针灸得以逆转。使用机器学习分析，我们发现与异常行为改善相关的关键区域可能与初级运动皮层（M1）的神经活动有关，这表明M1中c-Fos的变化可以预测针刺治疗诱导的运动功能改善。此外，针刺治疗不仅能使帕金森病运动行为相关脑区（纹状体、黑质致密部和苍白球）以及非运动症状相关脑区（海马、外侧下丘脑和孤束核）的脑神经元活动显著恢复正常。综上所述，我们的结果表明，针刺治疗可能通过使帕金森病小鼠模型的脑功能连接正常化来改善帕金森病症状，并为增强我们目前对非运动症状针灸机制的理解提供了新的见解。
