Trial reportBrain and behavior2025
Multi-Spatial Voxel-Scale Modulation of Acupuncture on Abnormal Brain Activity in Migraine Patients Without Aura: A Randomized Study Neuroimaging Trial.
Trial report in Brain and behavior, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A meta-analysis of neuroimaging evidence for acupuncture-mediated modulation of altered central pain processing in patients with chronic pain.Frontiers in neurologyPooled it
- Acupuncture modulates migraine-related neural and neuroendocrine regulatory pathways.The journal of headache and pain · 2026Review
- Acupuncture versus Sham Acupuncture for Migraine without Aura: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of pain research · 2026Review
- Evaluating the Effect of Electroacupuncture in Knee Osteoarthritis: Protocol for a Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of pain research · 2026Article
- EEG microstate responses of migraine patients to transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation.Frontiers in neurologyArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe role of acupuncture in treating migraine has been widely recognized, but the systematic, comprehensive and, multi-spatial voxel-scale mechanism of brain function changes is still unclear.
objectiveResting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) was used to investigate the modulatory effect of acupuncture on brain activity in patients with migraine without aura (MwoA) at different spatial voxel scales.
methodsA total of 64 patients with MwoA were randomized into true acupuncture (TA) and sham acupuncture (SA) groups. MwoA patients received TA or SA three times a week for four weeks, a total of 12 sessions. A clinical symptoms assessment and rs-fMRI scans were evaluated before and after four weeks of treatment. Amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) and fractional ALFF (fALFF), regional homogeneity (ReHo), and degree centrality (DC) were used to evaluate the spontaneous activity, activity coherence and connectivity importance of brain function at the single voxel, local voxel, and global voxel scales, respectively.
resultsThe clinical symptoms of both groups were improved compared with baseline. There were significant differences between the TA group and the SA group in migraine frequency, days and pain intensity. The neuroimaging data suggest that TA modulates a broader and more significant brain neural activity than SA. TA modulates the neural activity of the default mode network (DMN), visual network (VN), and sensorimotor network (SMN) at the single voxel scale, local voxel scale and global voxel scale, and these changes are correlated with the improvement of the migraine and quality of life.
conclusionsTA could exert therapeutic effects at different spatial voxel scales by modulating the DMN, VN, and SMN, which may be the neuroimaging mechanism of acupuncture for MwoA.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.