Acupuncture May Rewire the Brain in Depression

Acupuncture has formed an important part of traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years. It is still used to relieve the pain and discomfort associated with numerous conditions, including fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis.

It has also shown potential to reduce the symptoms of depression. Until now, though, the reason for this has remained uncertain.

Acupuncture and depression in brain scans

For a new study in Medicine, a research team led by scientists at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine examined brain-imaging data from seven earlier clinical trials. Together, those trials included 357 people with major depressive disorder.

The researchers compared brain scans from people treated with acupuncture with scans from participants taking antidepressants or receiving a placebo form of acupuncture. They identified an intriguing pattern: acupuncture appeared to rewire particular regions of the brain.

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"Acupuncture shows promise as an adjunctive therapy for depression, but its neurobiological mechanisms remain incompletely understood," write the researchers in their published paper.

"Our findings indicate that acupuncture-based interventions elicit a distinct pattern of neuroplastic remodeling, targeting key regions involved in emotion regulation and reward processing, which contrasts with the hippocampal–occipital effects of conventional treatments."

Among patients given acupuncture, activity increased in the right cingulum, a region associated with emotional control, and in the right caudate nucleus, which forms part of the brain's reward system.

A separate analysis associated a higher number of acupuncture sessions with greater change in the brain's left amygdala. Since this area plays an important role in emotional processing, the findings suggest needle treatment may act as a type of emotional brake.

Brain activity differed from antidepressant effects

The pattern was not the same among patients taking antidepressants. For those participants, heightened brain activity occurred in the left hippocampus, which is involved in memory and stress regulation, and the right middle occipital gyrus, an area responsible for visual processing.

The researchers found that acupuncture affected different parts of the brain to antidepressants. (Zhang et al., *Medicine, 2026)*

Against antidepressants on their own, acupuncture was more effective at lowering depression and anxiety scores among the volunteers. However, most people in the acupuncture group were also taking antidepressant medication.

"The correlation between neuroplastic changes in affective circuits and clinical improvement supports a potential mechanism for acupuncture's efficacy in alleviating core depressive symptoms such as anhedonia and emotional dysregulation," write the researchers.

Understanding of the underlying mechanisms is still at an early stage. Nevertheless, the findings indicate that acupuncture can lessen symptoms of depression, working through neural pathways that differ from those affected by conventional medicines.

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This could be especially important for the substantial proportion of people with depression who do not respond to standard treatments. Acupuncture may provide another option.

"This pattern suggests that acupuncture may offer complementary mechanisms for patients who exhibit hippocampal nonresponsiveness or reward-circuit dysfunction – a common phenotype in treatment-resistant depression," write the researchers.

Further research into acupuncture treatment

The World Health Organization reports that almost 6 in every 100 adults globally experience depression. The condition appears to result from a complex mix of influences, including genetics, environmental pressures and physical health.

Although progress is being made in finding ways to tackle it, relief remains out of reach for some people with depression. It is also believed to increase the likelihood of other health conditions, including dementia.

The next stage is to assess acupuncture's effects over longer periods and in larger, more diverse groups than this analysis could include. Acupuncture techniques differed across the seven trials examined, an issue future research could standardise.

Researchers will also need to investigate more closely the chemical processes behind the neural rewiring. Doing so will demand biological information beyond brain scans alone, and could show how acupuncture's benefits might be enhanced further.

Related: There Are Actually 2 Biologically Distinct Forms of Major Depression, Says New Study

"Future work should integrate molecular biomarkers with longitudinal neuroimaging to unravel acupuncture's systems-level mechanisms and to advance personalized neuromodulation strategies for depression," write the researchers.

The research was published in Medicine.

This article was fact-checked and edited by Fiona MacDonald. While we take pride in our process, we are only human. If you notice an error, please let us know.