Long-term acupuncture treatment has a multitargeting regulation on multiple brain regions in rats with Alzheimer＇s disease：a positron emission tomography study

The acute effect of acupuncture on Alzheimer’s disease,i.e.,on brain activation during treatment,has been reported.However,the effect of long-term acupuncture on brain activation in Alzheimer’s disease is unclear.Therefore,in this study,we performed long-term needling at Zusanli(ST36)or a sham point(1.5 mm lateral to ST36)in a rat Alzheimer’s disease model,for 30 minutes,once per day,for 30 days.The rats underwent 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography scanning.Positron emission tomography images were processed with SPM2.The brain areas activated after needling at ST36 included the left hippocampus,the left orbital cortex,the left infralimbic cortex,the left olfactory cortex,the left cerebellum and the left pons.In the sham-point group,the activated regions were similar to those in the ST36 group.However,the ST36 group showed greater activation in the cerebellum and pons than the sham-point group.These findings suggest that long-term acupuncture treatment has targeted regulatory effects on multiple brain regions in rats with Alzheimer’s disease.

Nucleus accumbens-linked executive control networks mediating reversal learning in tree shrew brain

DEAR EDITOR,Cognitive flexibility is crucial for animal survival but is frequently impaired in neuropsychiatric disorders.Although many brain structures and functional networks are involved in cognitive flexibility,the neural mechanisms underlying cooperation among specific functional networks remain unclear from a global perspective.In this study,[^(18)F]-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography(FDG-PET)was performed on 19 male tree shrews after four different visual discrimination tasks,including baseline,learning expert(LE),reversal naive(RN),and reversal expert(RE).