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Methodological Problems in fMRI Studies on Acupuncture: A Critical Review with Special Emphasis on Visual and Auditory Cortex Activations
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used for more than a decade to investigate possible supraspinal mechanisms of acupuncture stimulation. More than 60 studies and several review articles have been published on the topic. However, till now some acupuncture-fMRI studies have not ado...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
2011
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136715/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19793834 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ecam/nep154 |
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author | Beissner, Florian Henke, Christian |
author_facet | Beissner, Florian Henke, Christian |
author_sort | Beissner, Florian |
collection | PubMed |
description | Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used for more than a decade to investigate possible supraspinal mechanisms of acupuncture stimulation. More than 60 studies and several review articles have been published on the topic. However, till now some acupuncture-fMRI studies have not adopted all methodological standards applied to most other fMRI studies. In this critical review, we comment on some of the problems including the choice of baseline, interpretation of deactivations, attention control and implications of different group statistics. We illustrate the possible impact of these problems by focussing on some early findings, namely activations of visual and auditory cortical areas, when acupoints were stimulated that are believed to have a therapeutic effect on vision or hearing in traditional Chinese medicine. While we are far from questioning the validity of using fMRI for the study of acupuncture effects, we think that activations reported by some of these studies were probably not a direct result of acupuncture stimulation but rather attributable to one or more of the methodological problems covered here. Finally, we try to offer solutions for these problems where possible. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3136715 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | Hindawi Publishing Corporation |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-31367152011-07-28 Methodological Problems in fMRI Studies on Acupuncture: A Critical Review with Special Emphasis on Visual and Auditory Cortex Activations Beissner, Florian Henke, Christian Evid Based Complement Alternat Med Review Article Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used for more than a decade to investigate possible supraspinal mechanisms of acupuncture stimulation. More than 60 studies and several review articles have been published on the topic. However, till now some acupuncture-fMRI studies have not adopted all methodological standards applied to most other fMRI studies. In this critical review, we comment on some of the problems including the choice of baseline, interpretation of deactivations, attention control and implications of different group statistics. We illustrate the possible impact of these problems by focussing on some early findings, namely activations of visual and auditory cortical areas, when acupoints were stimulated that are believed to have a therapeutic effect on vision or hearing in traditional Chinese medicine. While we are far from questioning the validity of using fMRI for the study of acupuncture effects, we think that activations reported by some of these studies were probably not a direct result of acupuncture stimulation but rather attributable to one or more of the methodological problems covered here. Finally, we try to offer solutions for these problems where possible. Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2011 2011-02-13 /pmc/articles/PMC3136715/ /pubmed/19793834 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ecam/nep154 Text en Copyright © 2011 F. Beissner and C. Henke. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Review Article Beissner, Florian Henke, Christian Methodological Problems in fMRI Studies on Acupuncture: A Critical Review with Special Emphasis on Visual and Auditory Cortex Activations |
title | Methodological Problems in fMRI Studies on Acupuncture: A Critical Review with Special Emphasis on Visual and Auditory Cortex Activations |
title_full | Methodological Problems in fMRI Studies on Acupuncture: A Critical Review with Special Emphasis on Visual and Auditory Cortex Activations |
title_fullStr | Methodological Problems in fMRI Studies on Acupuncture: A Critical Review with Special Emphasis on Visual and Auditory Cortex Activations |
title_full_unstemmed | Methodological Problems in fMRI Studies on Acupuncture: A Critical Review with Special Emphasis on Visual and Auditory Cortex Activations |
title_short | Methodological Problems in fMRI Studies on Acupuncture: A Critical Review with Special Emphasis on Visual and Auditory Cortex Activations |
title_sort | methodological problems in fmri studies on acupuncture: a critical review with special emphasis on visual and auditory cortex activations |
topic | Review Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136715/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19793834 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ecam/nep154 |
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