Modulation of electroencephalograph activities by manual acupuncture stimulation in healthy subjects: An autoregressive spectral analysis

To investigate whether and how manual acupuncture (MA) modulates brain activities, we design an experiment that acupuncture at acupoint ST36 of right leg to obtain electroencephalograph (EEG) signals in healthy subjects. We adopt autoregressive (AR) Burg method to estimate the power spectrum of EEG signals and analyze the relative powers in delta (0 Hz-4 Hz), theta (4 Hz-8 Hz), alpha (8 Hz-13 Hz), and beta (13 Hz-30 Hz) bands. Our results show that MA at ST36 can significantly increase the EEG slow wave relative power (delta band) and reduce the fast wave relative powers (alpha and beta bands), while there are no statistical differences in theta band relative power between different acupuncture states. In order to quantify the ratio of slow to fast wave EEG activity, we compute the power ratio index. It is found that the MA can significantly increase the power ratio index, especially in frontal and central lobes. All the results highlight the modulation of brain activities with MA and may provide potential helps in clinical treatment of acupuncture. The proposed quantitative method of acupuncture signals may be further used to make MA more standardized.     

基于广义线性模型的针刺足三里脊髓背根神经活动解码

神经系统以时空编码形式刻画外部刺激信息, 针刺作为对穴位的机械作用可以等效为对神经系统的一种外部刺激. 为了揭示神经系统如何表达和传递针刺作用, 本文设计了不同频率的针刺动物实验, 即在针刺大鼠足三里穴位时获取脊髓背根神经节电信号. 首先, 经过数据预处理获得单神经元动作电位序列并转化为点过程序列. 其次, 应用广义线性模型(GLM)编码针刺作用, 产生模拟的神经放电序列. 另外, 在模型基础上应用贝叶斯解码, 根据神经放电序列重构针刺随时间变化的位移波形. 最后, 基于时间重标度理论应用分位数分位数(Q-Q)图方法检验编码模型与点过程数据的一致性. 结果表明, GLM能够模拟针刺神经编码, 并正确解码针刺信息. 本文为针刺研究提供了新的视角, 对于构建神经系统与机器接口以改善针刺的临床研究具有潜在意义. 关键词： 针刺 点过程 广义线性模型 神经解码