ReviewPain research & management
A Narrative Review of Neuroimaging Studies in Acupuncture for Migraine.
Review in Pain research & management. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 2 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
10 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Acupuncture for migraine: a literature review of neuroimaging studies.Frontiers in neurology · 2025Pooled it
- Effect of acupuncture on the modulation of functional brain regions in migraine: A meta-analysis of fMRI studies.Frontiers in neurology · 2023Pooled it
- Multi-Spatial Voxel-Scale Modulation of Acupuncture on Abnormal Brain Activity in Migraine Patients Without Aura: A Randomized Study Neuroimaging Trial.Brain and behavior · 2025Trial
- Potential neural mechanisms of acupuncture therapy on migraine: a systematic review and activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis update.Quantitative imaging in medicine and surgery · 2025Article
- A summary of the current circumstances of migraineurs in China: a review of the GBD2019 database.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Review
- Contralateral acupuncture for migraine without aura: a randomized trial protocol with multimodal MRI.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- Evaluation of a Clustering Approach to Define Distinct Subgroups of Patients With Migraine to Select Electroacupuncture Treatments.Neurology · 2023Article
- Central Mechanism of Acupuncture Treatment in Patients with Migraine: Study Protocol for Randomized Controlled Neuroimaging Trial.Journal of pain research · 2023Article
- Acupuncture Modulates the Spontaneous Activity and Functional Connectivity of Calcarine in Patients With Chronic Stable Angina Pectoris.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2022Article
- The effects of acupuncture therapy in migraine: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Acupuncture has been widely used as an alternative and complementary therapy for migraine. With the development of neuroimaging techniques, the central mechanism of acupuncture for migraine has gained increasing attention. This review aimed to analyze the study design and main findings of neuroimaging studies of acupuncture for migraine to provide the reference for future research. The original studies were collected and screened in three English databases (PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library) and four Chinese databases (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Biomedical Literature database, the Chongqing VIP database, and Wanfang database). As a result, a total of 28 articles were included. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was the most used neuroimaging technique to explore the cerebral activities of acupuncture for migraine. This review manifested that acupuncture could elicit cerebral responses on patients with migraine, different from sham acupuncture. The results indicated that the pain systems, including the medial pain pathway, lateral pain pathway, and descending pain modulatory system, participated in the modulation of the cerebral activities of migraine by acupuncture.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
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.