Complexity analysis of EEG signals evoked by acupuncture at ‘Zusanli’ acupoint (St36)

A new approach for quantifying the relationship between brain activity patterns and acupuncture is presented by analyzing the spatio-temporal patterns in the electroencephalogram (EEG) using Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexity analysis. In this paper, EEG signals are recorded simultaneously while acupuncturing at `Zusanli´ acupoint (St36) manually. The subjects are 5 acupuncture university students. Every volunteer is acupunctured for four times with different frequencies where 20 groups, 60 pieces data (before, during and after acupuncture for each group) is selected to compare the acupuncture effect on complexity of brain activity. Analyze EEG signals recorded from electrodes C₃, C₄ with box chart and bar chart. statistical significance is tested by t-test to compare the effect of acupuncture. Analyze EEG signals recorded from 20 electrodes with brain image which reflect the complexity of the whole brain directly to find out which region of brain is affected most by acupuncture. The conclusion derived from experiments and analysis is that acupuncture would increase complexity of the whole brain activity and have the greatest impact on forehead region.