Effects of acupuncture in pain relief based on EEG research

Pain is one of the most important sensations in daily life and getting the objective assessment criterion of pain relief is great difficult for researchers. The traditional Chinese medicine such as acupuncture has shown great potential in pain relief. Transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation (TEAS) has been used and spectral edgy frequency (SEF) of EEG has been extracted and used as evaluation criterion of pain relief in the research. Six volunteers were enrolled in the experiment and each one received pain stimulation and transcutaneous electrical stimulation on acupoint and near mock acupoint. The SEF increased when pain stimulation was added and decreased under TEAS, but it changed less than no acupuncture stimulation. The study primary proved the effective of acupuncture in pain relief and SEF may be used as an objective assessment criterion of pain perception.