The Neuroanatomic Basis of the Acupuncture Principal Meridians
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- Mayo Clinic, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
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- Document Type:
- Manuscript
- Date:
- Received 22 September 2009 05:21 UTC; Posted 22 September 2009
- Subjects:
- Neuroscience
- Abstract:
Acupuncture involves treating illness by inserting needles at specified body locations (acupoints). The Principal meridians are pathways that join acupoints with related physiologic effects. Despite nearly 5000 years of continuous clinical study, an accepted anatomic or physiologic basis for acupuncture's clinical effects has remained elusive. Some acupoints overlie peripheral nerves, and fMRI studies demonstrate that acupoints have specific effects on central nervous system processing. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) founders described the body's viscera based on anatomic dissections yet not a discrete nervous system. By applying computer graphics and virtual human imaging techniques to human developmental neuroanatomy, this paradox may potentially be explained: acupuncture Principal meridians likely are TCM's representation of the nervous system. This neuroanatomic model of the Principal meridians is consistent with acupuncture's known neurophysiologic effects, and may allow 5 millennia of accumulated TCM observations regarding human health and illness to be understood in modern anatomic and physiologic terms.
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- This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
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Dorsher, Peter. The Neuroanatomic Basis of the Acupuncture Principal Meridians. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2009.3795.1> (2009)
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Morry Silberstein on 12 October 2009 22:09 UTC
This is interesting, and is in line with my own – just-published – model; see:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19765595
Dung and colleagues have, on the basis of human dissection, believed that acupuncture meridians are part of the nervous system. Your – and my own – work supports this.