Am J Chin Med. 1995 ; 23(3-4): 319-25.

Non-invasive measurement of brain activity using functional MRI: toward the study of brain response to acupuncture stimulation.

Yoshida T, Tanaka C, Umeda M, Higuchi T, Fukunaga M, Naruse S.

Department of Neurosurgery, Meiji College of Oriental Medicine, Kyoto, Japan.

We studied functional MRI in 15 male and 13 female normal volunteers on a clinical MRI system using gradient echo sequence. During the experiments, brain activation was induced by grasping the unilateral hand once or twice a second for motor tasks. A localized increase of MRI signal in the contralateral motor cortex was observed in 17 out of 21 cases (81%) under right hand motor task and 11 out of 21 cases (52%) under left hand motor task. The application of this method may be useful to evaluate brain response to acupuncture.