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Updated: Aug 5, 2026
Monitoring Acupuncture Effects on Human Brain by fMRI
Published on: April 8, 2010
Effects of intrasegmental electrical acupuncture on dental pain: evaluation by threshold estimation and sensory
C R Chapman1, A C Chen, J J Bonica
1Department of Anesthesiology, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Psychology and Anesthesia Research Center, USA Department of Anesthesiology, USA Department of Anesthesiology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Wash. 98195, U.S.A.
Abstract:
The effect of 80 min of low frequency (2 Hz) electric acupunctural stimulation at facial sites on the perception of induced dental pain was evaluated using both pain threshold and sensory decision theory (SDT) procedures. The demonstration of a 187% increase in threshold over a 20 min period of acupunctural stimulation replicated earlier work by Swedish investigators. SDT analyses indicated that the threshold increase reflected a relatively pure sensory change with no significant modification of response bias. However, subjects were able to perceive some of the stimuli presented below threshold level following acupuncture, thus indicating that the threshold concept has been an inadequate description of the phenomenon. This study demonstrated that intrasegmental analgesic stimulation is more efficacious than the extrasegmental meridian point stimulation used in our earlier studies. Possible mechanisms for the observed effect were discussed.
