Gating Attractor Dynamics of Frontal Cortex Under Acupuncture via Recurrent Neural Network.

Journal: IEEE journal of biomedical and health informatics
PMID:

Abstract

Acupuncture can regulate the functions of human body and improve the cognition of brain. However, the mechanism of acupuncture manipulations remains unclear. Here, we hypothesis that the frontal cortex plays a gating role in information routing of brain network under acupuncture. To that end, the gating effect of frontal cortex under acupuncture is analyzed in combination with EEG data of acupuncture at Zusanli acupoints. In addition, recurrent neural network (RNN) is used to reproduce the dynamics of frontal cortex under normal state and acupuncture state. From low-dimensional view, it is shown that the brain networks under acupuncture state can show stable attractor cycle dynamics, which may explain the regulation effect of acupuncture. Comparing with different manipulations, we find that the attractor of low-dimensional trajectory varies under different frequencies of acupuncture. Besides, a strip gated band of neural dynamics is found by changing the frequency of stimulation and excitatory-inhibitory balance of network. This reverse engineering of brain network indicates that the differences among acupuncture manipulations are caused by interaction and separation in the neural activity space between attractors that encode acupuncture function. Consequently, our results may provide help for quantitative analysis of acupuncture, and benefit for the clinical guidance of acupuncture clinicians.

Authors

  • Kai Li
    Department of Gastroenterology, Shanghai First People's Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
  • Jiang Wang
    School of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China.
  • Zhicai Hu
  • Bin Deng
    School of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China.
  • Haitao Yu
    Department of Fundamental Medicine, Wuxi School of Medicine, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, Jiangsu, China.