ReviewFrontiers in psychiatry2021
Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies on Acupuncture Therapy in Depression: A Systematic Review.
Review in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
12 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of acupuncture on brain function in patients with depression: A meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies.Medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Neuroimaging studies of acupuncture for depressive disorder: a systematic review of published papers from 2014 to 2024.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Electroacupuncture as a rapid-onset and safer complementary therapy for depression: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- The efficacy and cerebral mechanism of intradermal acupuncture for major depressive disorder: a multicenter randomized controlled trial.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- Acupuncture modulates emotional network resting-state functional connectivity in patients with insomnia disorder: a randomized controlled trial and fMRI study.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2024Trial
- The altered hypothalamic network functional connectivity in diminished ovarian reserve and regulation effect of acupuncture: a randomized controlled neuroimaging study protocol.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2025Article
- Acupuncture effects on emotional reactivity of youth with self-reported depressive symptoms.Psychoradiology · 2025Article
- Research status and trends of functional magnetic resonance imaging technology in the field of acupuncture: a bibliometric analysis over the past two decades.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Review
- The impact of acupuncture on the brain function of patients with mild to moderate major depressive disorder: a randomized controlled trial protocol.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2024Article
- Acupuncture may play a key role in anti-depression through various mechanisms in depression.Chinese medicine · 2024Review
- The efficacy and cerebral mechanism of intradermal acupuncture for major depressive disorder: a study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Low-Dimensional Dynamics of Brain Activity Associated with Manual Acupuncture in Healthy Subjects.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Accumulating studies had been performed using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to understand the neural mechanism of acupuncture therapy for depression. However, inconsistencies remain due to differences in research designs and MRI analytical methods. Therefore, we aim to summarize the current MRI research and provide useful information for further research by identifying papers published in English and Chinese about MRI studies on acupuncture for depression up to November 2020. A total of 22 studies met the inclusion criteria, including 810 depression patients and 416 health controls (HCs). The applied designs of these studies are mainly random control trial and pre-post designs. The MRI analytical methods are mainly (fractional) amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF/ALFF) and functional connectivity (FC), whereas a small subset of studies used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The most consistent functional MRI (fMRI) results showed increased
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Registered trials
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 Socratic graph.