Characteristics analysis of acupuncture electroencephalograph based on mutual information Lempel-Ziv complexity

As a convenient approach to the characterization of cerebral cortex electrical information, electroencephalograph （EEG） has potential clinical application in monitoring the acupuncture effects. In this paper, a method composed of the mutual information method and Lempel-Ziv complexity method （MILZC） is proposed to investigate the effects of acupuncture on the complexity of information exchanges between different brain regions based on EEGs. In the experiments, eight subjects are manually acupunctured at ＇Zusanli＇ acupuncture point （ST-36） with different frequencies （i.e., 50, 100, 150, and 200 times/min） and the EEGs are recorded simultaneously. First, MILZC values are compared in general. Then average brain connections are used to quantify the effectiveness of acupuncture under the above four frequencies. Finally, significance index P values are used to study the spatiality of the acupuncture effect on the brain. Three main findings are obtained： （i） MILZC values increase during the acupuncture; （ii） manual acupunctures （MAs） with 100 times/rain and 150 times/min are more effective than with 50 times/min and 200 times/rain; （iii） contralateral hemisphere activation is more prominent than ipsilateral hemisphere＇s. All these findings suggest that acupuncture contributes to the increase of brain information exchange complexity and the MILZC method can successfully describe these changes.