Electroacupuncture Can Change EEG Microstate Features in Stroke Patients

Stroke can lead to changes in the structure and functional brain networks, severely affecting patients' daily lives. Electroacupuncture, a combination of traditional acupuncture and electrical stimulation, can serve as an alternative therapy for stroke rehabilitation. Assessing the neurophysiological changes associated with electroacupuncture in patients helps to explore the mechanisms by which electroacupuncture affects stroke. However, current studies mainly rely on static EEG features for evaluation, which may lose relevant information in the temporal dimension. To fill this gap, we used EEG microstate analysis to comprehensively assess the changes in brain activity of stroke patients before, during, and after electroacupuncture. The results showed that, compared with before electroacupuncture, the duration, occurrence, and coverage of EEG microstates B and E changed during and after electroacupuncture. In addition, the observed-expected transition probability from microstate B to E was significantly different before and during electroacupuncture, and the observed-expected transition probability from microstate D to A after electroacupuncture was significantly higher than before electroacupuncture. Taken together, the microstates B and E may serve as objective biomarkers of electroacupuncture.Clinical Relevance- EEG microstates can serve as novel biomarkers to reflect the neuromodulation effects of electroacupuncture on stroke patients.