A Resting-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study on the Efficacy of Brain Function Rehabilitation in Post-Stroke Hemiplegia Using Scalp Acupuncture

As one of the rehabilitation therapies for stroke-induced hemiplegia, central mechanisms of therapeutic effects of the scalp acupuncture remain poorly understood. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the effect of scalp acupuncture on post-stroke hemiplegia patients. We recruited ten patients with left hemiplegia and ten healthy subjects for this study and randomly assigned patients to two groups: the acupuncture group (scalp acupuncture plus usual care, N = 5, average age = 65.6±4.0) and the control group (usual care, N = 5, average age = 55.2±9.8). We scanned all patients before and after the 14-day therapy and then calculated the functional connectivity (FC) between the seed point (left primary motor cortex BA4) and other brain regions. At the beginning of the study, patients showed negative activations in the left motor cortex and positive activations in the bilateral cerebellum. After the scalp acupuncture therapy, the patients showed a decrease of negatively activated regions, as well as an increase in regions with positive activations, which the control group didn't have. These changes in the acupuncture group indicated that the treatment had driven the brain activity from the unaffected side to the affected side. Our results suggested that the scalp acupuncture therapy markedly improved the brain function in left hemiplegic patients and could potentially help the recovery of mobility.