Functional Connectivity Modulation by Acupuncture in Patients with Bell's Palsy.

Yunpeng Bian,Chuanfu Li,Bensheng Qiu,Qiuju Xue,Hongxing Kan,Sheng Hu,Chunsheng Xu,Jun Yang,Xiaoxuan He

doi:10.1155/2016/5928758

Abstract

Bell's palsy (BP), an acute unilateral facial paralysis, is frequently treated with acupuncture in many countries. However, the mechanism of treatment is not clear so far. In order to explore the potential mechanism, 22 healthy volunteers and 17 BP patients with different clinical duration were recruited. The resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans were conducted before and after acupuncture at LI4 (Hegu), respectively. By comparing BP-induced functional connectivity (FC) changes with acupuncture-induced FC changes in the patients, the abnormal increased FC that could be reduced by acupuncture was selected. The FC strength of the selected FC at various stages was analyzed subsequently. Our results show that FC modulation of acupuncture is specific and consistent with the tendency of recovery. Therefore, we propose that FC modulation by acupuncture may be beneficial to recovery from the disease.

Highlights

Bell’s palsy (BP), an acute unilateral facial paralysis, is a frequent facial movement dysfunction caused by the impaired facial nerve that controls movement of facial muscles [1,2,3]
17 regions of interest (ROIs) were selected from acupuncture needling response (Table S1) and BP patients’ motor task (Table S2), and the functional connectivity (FC) of each ROI in these cases was analyzed
The above-mentioned two intergroup results of left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) were compared, and the overlapped areas were obtained in the bilateral supplementary motor area (SMA) and right superior frontal gyrus (SFG) of these results (Figure S3C)

Summary

Introduction

Bell’s palsy (BP), an acute unilateral facial paralysis, is a frequent facial movement dysfunction caused by the impaired facial nerve that controls movement of facial muscles [1,2,3]. Acupuncture, a traditional Chinese medicine [4, 5], has been considered to have a beneficial effect on the acute state of BP in the last few years [6]. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a noninvasive brain imaging technique, is widely used in the assessment of the effect of acupuncture [8, 9]. There are many fMRI investigations on how acupuncture affects healthy people, suggesting that acupuncture can adjust brain functional network [10,11,12,13]. More and more neuroimaging studies showed that acupuncture had the same effect on the brain functional network in patients with certain diseases [14]. Acupuncture modulated endogenous pain regulation network, valued by analgesic effects in low-back and leg pain patients [17]

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Results

Conclusion