Acupuncture therapy is effective in the treatment of quite a lot of clinical conditions. Accumulating evidence demonstrates that acupuncture therapy not only has specific therapeutic effects

but also in a large part has nonspecific effects such as the patient's and/or acupuncture practitioner's"unity of form and spirit"

"treatment experience and environment"and"expectations and trust"

etc. In the present article

we make a review about progresses of recent researches on the non-specific effect of acupuncture therapy and its influencing factors from 1)placebo acupuncture

2)expectancy effect

3)Hawthorne effect

and 4)Pygmalion effect. The placebo acupuncture intervention may enhance the therapeutic effect by triggering the cutaneous somatosensory afferents

brainstem

hypothalamus

limbic system

etc. to produce cognitive and emotional responses. The patient's expectancy and belief about acupuncture analgesia are associated with activities of the spino-thalamo-cortical pathway

cingulate gyrus

endogenous opioid system

emotional and reward circuits

etc. Regarding the Hawthorne effect and Pygmalion effect

it is supposed that the patients' behavioral tendency changes and higher expectations for acupuncture treatment may produce a positive impact on the outcomes of treatment. In-depth exploration of the influencing factors and the therapeutic targets of acupuncture treatment will further improve clinical effect

and serve the patients better.