HOW DOES ACUPUNCTURE WORK?

A BBC programme shown last year called ‘Trust Me I’m a Doctor’ involved an A&E doctor at St Thomas’ Hospital in south London, Dr Salehya Ahsan, undergoing a MRI while having an acupuncture treatment. She received acupuncture on just one point on her hand called Large Intestine 4, or He Gu. The experience nvolved specific patterns of activation and de-activation in the brain. The activations were in some superficial regions of the somatosensory cortex and were what would be expected given the touch and sensory component of acupuncture. Much more interesting, however, were the deactivations were in the deeper limbic system of the brain, which is associated with pain (and also depression and other negative emotional states). If it simply hurt the patient to have a needle stuck into their hand, we would expect to see activations in this area – instead there were deactivations! The only plausible hypothesis is that acupuncture at this point mediates our experience of pain. Dr Ahsan was very impressed by the potential for treating chronic pain.