Acupuncture is a treatment for pain and illness in which thin needles are positioned just under the surface of the skin at special centers around the body. It originated in China over 3000 years ago, but despite its longevity Western medicine has been reluctant to accept acupuncture as a valid method of treatment.
In our lab,we investigated the effect of acupuncture on the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Test subjects were notified that they would receive some form of acupuncture during the imaging but were unfamiliar with the procedure. The resulting functional maps generated from group data show that when the visual acupuncture point is stimulated there is bilateral auditory cortex activation. A control point was used that is related to gustation. The results from needling this point did not activate either the visual or auditory regions. This work investigated the time course of the activation, the effect of a combination of points and the activation induced by sham points. (Read IEEE Acupuncture Paper).