Methodological Problems in fMRI Studies on Acupuncture: A Critical Review with Special Emphasis on Visual and Auditory Cortex Activations

Table 1

Methodological and statistical details of acupuncture-fMRI studies reporting activations of visual or auditory cortices under stimulation of respective acupoints.

	𝑛	Block length	Group statistics	Correction method	𝑃-value	Stimulation method	Activations/ deactivations	(De-)activated Brodman areas	Acupoints used
Vision-related acupoints
Cho et al. [3]	12	50s	None	n/a	n/a	Manual	Both	BA17, 18, 19^a	BL60-67
Gareus et al. [10]^b	8/6	60s	Other	n/a	𝑃<.05	Manual	None	None	GB37
Siedentopf et al. [11]	10	40s	FFX	Cluster level	𝑃<.05	Laser	Activations	BA18, 19	BL67
Li et al. [12]	18	20s	RFX^c	None	𝑃<.001	Manual/ electr.	Both	BA17, 18, 19	BL60, 65, 66, 67
Litscher et al. [13]	1	60s	None	Cluster level	𝑃<.05	Laser	Activations	BA19	BL67, BL60
Parrish et al. [14]^d	12	300s	FFX	None	n/a	Manual	Activations	BA17, 18, 19^a	BL60
Kong et al. [15, 16]	6^e	30s	RFX	None	𝑃<.001	Electrical	Deactivations	BA17, 18, 19	GB37, BL60
Hearing-related acupoints
Parrish et al. [14]^d	12	300s	FFX	None	n/a	Manual	Activations	BA22, 41, 42^a	KID3
Wesolowski et al. [17]^b	20	30s	RFX	None	𝑃<.001	Manual	None	None	GB43

^aDerived from figures (not reported in article); ^bStudies with negative results; ^cOnly subjects with activations on first level were included in second-level analysis; ^dStudy covers both visual and auditory points; ^eEach subject was measured six times resulting in an effective 𝑛 = 20 (according to the authors).