Tomokazu Murase1,
Masahiro Umeda2, Yuko Kawai2, Yasuharu Watanabe2,
Shoji Naruse3, Chuzo Tanaka1, Toshihiro Highchi1
1Department
of Neruosurgery, Meiji University of Integrative Medicine., Nantan, Kyoto,
Japan; 2Department of Medical Informatics, Meiji University of
Integrative Medicine., Nantan, Kyoto, Japan; 3Daini Okamoto
General Hospital, Uji, Kyoto, Japan
We focused on the temporal changes in brain activity caused by acupuncture stimulation with deconvolution analysis to analyze brain responses without the expected reference function. For statistical analysis, 3dDeconvolve, which is part of the AFNI package, was used to extract the impulse response functions (IRFs) of the fMRI signals on a voxel-wise basis. Delayed and long-sustained increases of the signal induced by the real acupuncture were observed after stimulation. Especially, in real acupuncture, significantly delayed and long-sustained increases of BOLD signals were observed in several brain regions related to pain perception than those observed in sham acupuncture and palm scrubbing.
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