Table 1.
Characteristics of the AD patients and healthy controls.
Fig 1.
Protocols for acupuncture.
Fig 2.
(A and B). Between-group differences in AD and HC before acupuncture, based on a 2-sample t test with age, gender, education level and mean FDR as covariates. The threshold was set to P < 0.001 with topo FDR corrected. The color scale represents t values. Cold color represents decreased ALFF in AD patients compared to HC. AD, Alzheimer’s disease; HC, healthy control; ALFF, amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations.
Table 2.
Regions showing decreased and increased brain activities in AD patients comparing to HCs before acupuncture.
Fig 3.
ALFF changes between post-acupuncture and pre-acupuncture in the AD patients, using the paired-samples T test analysis.
SCC, subgenual cingulate cortex; MCC, middle cingulate cortex; IFG, inferior frontal gyrus; SFG, superior frontal gyrus; ITG, inferior temporal gyrus; **represents significantly changed ALFF in the AD patients when comparing post acupuncture with pre acupuncture (P<0.05); *represents slightly changed ALFF in the AD patients when comparing post acupuncture with pre acupuncture (P>0.05).
Fig 4.
The FC differences between pre-acupuncture and post-acupuncture in AD patients (P<0.001, with topoFDR corrected).
Regions which were significantly changed in ALFF were selected as seeds to perform the seed-based interregional correlation analysis. Increased connectivity between the right hippocampus and the left precentral gyrus was found in the AD patients when comparing post-acupuncture with pre-acupuncture.
Table 3.
Region showing increased hippocampal connectivity in AD subjects after acupuncture comparing to before acupuncture.
Fig 5.
Correlations of clinical variables and ALFF values in the AD patients.
MMSE, MoCA scores showed positive correlations with ALFF values of the SCC. Negative correlations were shown between AVLT scores and ALFF values of the hippocampus and the right ITG (P<0.05). ALFF, amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations; AD, Alzheimer’s disease; MMSE, Mini-Mental State Examination; MoCA, Montreal Cognitive Assessment; SCC, subgenual cingulate cortex; AVLT, Auditory verbal learning test; ITG, inferior temporal gyrus.
Fig 6.
Correlations of clinical variables and hippocampus connectivity in AD patients.
AVLT scores showed negative correlation with connectivity of the right hippocampus and left precentral gyrus (P<0.05). AD, Alzheimer’s disease; AVLT, Auditory verbal learning test.