肥胖是一种全球非常严重的现象，已经成为危害人类健康的巨大杀手。由于传统的节食和运动是一个持久的过程，效果不佳；减肥药物的副作用比较大，如何规范治疗肥胖、提高肥胖病人的生活质量，一直困扰着患者和临床工作者。针刺作为一种绿色疗法，在临床调节体重中具有独特的功效。本项目选取肥胖和超重人群为研究对象，基于针灸减肥临床治疗方案，借助现代多模态神经影像的技术手段，考察针刺即时效应对病患葡萄糖水平、体温的影响，探寻即时真针刺与假针刺效应对应中枢神经系统响应的相似性和特异性。在针刺较长治疗过程中，分别选取治疗1个月、3个月为影像学数据采集点，从大脑治疗过程中形态学变化为切入点，衡量长期针刺作用下，大脑摄食相关脑区结构变化影像学特征，为针刺减肥提供科学、可靠的影像学证据。

This neuroimaging project including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is of major significance in future obesity treatment and management. Obesity is a significant and costly health problem worldwide, especially in China, and acupuncture, which has been around for over 3000 years, has been shown to be an effective treatment modality for this condition. fMRI and DTI are useful for human brain mapping as shown in various studies. We are in the process of determining how certain acupuncture points can affect specific regions of the brain to control appetite and satiety, leading to weight loss. There are complex neurohormonal pathways that this project will hope to address in order to identify the mechanisms by which electroacupuncture influences human neurophysiology and brain structural changes via long-term weight loss. This study focuses on how particular acupoints and their sham counterparts affect the satiety center, glucose metabolism, and core body temperature (basal metabolic rate (BMR)) in healthy overweight, obese and normal Chinese adults who fit the inclusion criteria. Most importantly, the focus is on determining if there are any structural brain alterations due to long-term electroacupuncture weight loss treatment between overweight and obese individuals using DTI. Connectivity analysis will utilize the amygdala (AMY) and hypothalamus (HYP) as regions of interest (ROIs) in the discrete cosine transform and seed correlation analysis methods. This project, as well as other future studies, will be of great importance in helping understand how acupuncture can be a safe, inexpensive, and highly effective treatment modality for one of the world’s most common detrimental diseases, obesity.