Napadow Paper Linking ANS and fMRI and acupuncture stimuli
Kristen Sparrow • April 25, 2012
I’ve been making my way through the Napadow paper mentioned here and here. It is a remarkable piece of research because it not only links individual acupuncture points to their fMRI profile, but also to their ANS response and to the subjective pain response evoked. Here is the final paragraph. Link to the full articlenapadow_hbm_2012-fmri, ANS,Acupuncture
In conclusion, our approach allowed us to link ANS and
fMRI response in order to infer potential control brain circuitry underlying different autonomic responses to acupuncture stimuli at different acupoints. Our results
suggest that different sub-regions of the brain circuitry
responding to acupuncture appear to be associated with
different ANS outflow responses to needle stimuli and
may result from different sensations elicited by stimuli at
different bodily locations. This study applied er-fMRI to
link brain and ANS response to acupuncture, and future
studies should explore how this central autonomic network
response to acupuncture influences clinical
outcomes.
