Characterizing the transmission of acupuncture signal: A combination of experimental and computational study

In order to reveal the underlying mechanisms about the conduction of acupuncture signal, manual acupuncture (MA) manipulations with different frequencies are taken at ‘Zusanli’ points of experimental rats. The induced electrical signal in spinal dorsal root ganglion is detected and recorded. It is found that rate coding features of acupuncture with different frequencies are different in PSTHs after spike sorting. Neuronal adaption and saturation phenomena are also observed. To elucidate the underlying mechanisms, we develop a delayed feedforward network model with plasticity for acupuncture signal transmission path. It is shown that this model could account for some important experimental phenomena and make further testable predictions. The underlying mechanisms of acupuncture are better understood by combining the experiment and simulation results.