Power spectrum analysis of EEG signals evoked by LED acupuncture in healthy subjects

Acupuncture is an important part of Chinese medicine with unique ways of thinking and rich experiences whose efficacy has been proved by Chinese clinical research during thousands of years. LED acupuncture, as an emerging technology, is a relative ideal equivalent replacement of traditional acupuncture, whereas its mechanism is still unknown. In this paper, we developed a LED light acupuncture experimental equipment with various types of irradiation. We designed an experiment that irradiate at ST36 acupoint with continuous 850nm (infrared) LED light to obtain EEG signals from healthy human beings. AR burg spectrum estimation method and variance analysis method were used to analyze EEG signals of different rhythms, and it is found that continuous 850nm LED light stimulation leads to the significant increase of relative power spectrum at δ-rhythm and the significant reduce at α-rhythm, meanwhile, there was a larger lasting effect after the irradiation. However, there was no significant effect on β-rhythm and θ-rhythm. Thus, we have verified the effects of LED light acupuncture on brain activities. The obtained results can give some theoretical supports to reveal the LED acupuncture action mechanism.