Using functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI)to investigate the underlying mechanisms of acupuncture therapy attracts an increasing attention nowadays.In the present article

the authors make a brief analysis on the progresses of researches about the intra-brain responses of acupuncture stimulation following collecting original research papers with key words of"acupuncture"

"fMRI"and "magnetic resonance imaging"in PubMed and CNKI databases from January 2003 to December2014.As a result

a total of 253 original research articles were collected.We found that:1)in the past 10 years

the amount of fMRI studies on acupuncture is growing;2)most of these studies(183)are conducted in healthy subjects

and fewer studies(44)conducted in patients with problems of neurology

psychonosology

gastroenterology

circulation system

pediatrics

myopia and dermatology

or with pain;3)a larger population of studies are designed to reveal the specificity of responses of acupuncture point stimulation

and fewer focus on analyzing the regularities of acupuncture points combination.The authors suggest that the coming acupuncture-neuroimaging studies need to expand the research ranges or contents

and improve experimental designs

data analysis and quality control(for example

reducing differences of baseline data

age span

psychological state

etc.

and increasing sample size

etc).