Tamai Hideaki, Komine Shoichi, Kikuchi Senichiro, Waki Hideaki
Department of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, Faculty of Health Care, Teikyo Heisei University, Toshima-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Research Institute of Oriental Medicine, Teikyo Heisei University, Toshima-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2024 Nov 15;18:1433312. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2024.1433312. eCollection 2024.
Acupuncture on the acupuncture point GV20 has been considered effective for managing psychoneurological disorders since ancient times, and GV20 is now regularly used to treat stress-related diseases (SRDs), including psychoneurological disorders. Although reports indicating that acupuncture stimulation of GV20 alone regulates cerebral blood flow (CBF) in brain regions associated with SRDs have been scattered, from the perspective of the need for earlier action, the effects on subjective stress as self-reported in the stress state of healthy individuals and CBF changes in related prefrontal cortex (PFC) subregions, which is based as underlying mechanism, remain unclear. Therefore, there is a need to explore effective methods for analyzing such effects.
Multiple consecutive mental arithmetic tasks were performed to induce sufficient stress in healthy university students. Real acupuncture or sham acupuncture was performed on GV20, and subjective stress and CBF changes in PFC subregions were observed before and after acupuncture using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, which were analyzed based on the general linear model method and correlation analysis.
Subjective stress was suppressed and recovered significantly faster in the true acupuncture group than in the sham acupuncture group. Furthermore, significant negative correlations were found between subjective stress and CBF in several PFC subregions during and after the tasks, with more correlated regions on the left side than on the right side of the PFC. Among them, the CBF of the left ventrolateral PFC (vl-PFC) was suggested to be maintained in the true acupuncture group under repeated tasks load, which was inferred to be correlated with delayed decreases in subjective stress after acupuncture.
This pilot study showed that fNIRS is feasible for assessing delayed PFC inhibition in acute stress by acupuncture on GV20. Acupuncture treatment on GV20 resulted in early suppression of subjective stress and early recovery. The neuroscientific rationale for this finding may lie in its effect on maintaining CBF in the left vl-PFC related to delayed inhibition of subjective stress, and would make it reasonable to apply acupuncture to GV20 in healthy individuals. Larger studies are needed to corroborate these findings and obtain reliable conclusions.
自古以来，针刺督脉20穴（GV20）就被认为对治疗精神神经疾病有效，目前GV20常用于治疗与压力相关的疾病（SRD），包括精神神经疾病。尽管关于单独针刺GV20调节与SRD相关脑区脑血流量（CBF）的报道较为零散，但从早期干预的必要性来看，针刺对健康个体应激状态下自我报告的主观压力的影响以及作为潜在机制的相关前额叶皮质（PFC）亚区的CBF变化仍不清楚。因此，有必要探索分析此类影响的有效方法。
对健康大学生进行多次连续的心算任务以诱导足够的压力。在GV20上进行真针刺或假针刺，并在针刺前后使用功能近红外光谱观察主观压力和PFC亚区的CBF变化，基于一般线性模型方法和相关性分析进行分析。
真针刺组的主观压力比假针刺组显著更快地得到抑制和恢复。此外，在任务期间和之后，几个PFC亚区的主观压力与CBF之间存在显著的负相关，PFC左侧的相关区域比右侧更多。其中，真针刺组在重复任务负荷下左侧腹外侧PFC（vl-PFC）的CBF被认为得以维持，这被推断与针刺后主观压力的延迟下降相关。
这项初步研究表明，功能近红外光谱对于评估针刺GV20对急性应激中PFC延迟抑制是可行的。针刺GV20可早期抑制主观压力并促进早期恢复。这一发现的神经科学原理可能在于其对维持与主观压力延迟抑制相关的左侧vl-PFC的CBF的作用，这使得在健康个体中应用针刺GV20具有合理性。需要更大规模的研究来证实这些发现并得出可靠的结论。
