CHARACTERIZING NEURAL ELECTRICAL SIGNALS EVOKED BY ACUPUNCTURE OF DIFFERENT TYPES AND FREQUENCIES
不同手法及频率针刺神经电信号的编码特征提取

Neural system characterizes information in external stimulations by spatiotemporal encoding. Acupuncture, as a kind of external stimulus, evokes various firing patterns in neural system. In order to reveal the underlying mechanisms about the conduction and function of acupuncture, experiments are designed that manual acupuncture (MA) manipulations with different types and frequencies are taken at ``Zusanli" points of experiment rats. The induced electrical signals in spinal dorsal root ganglion are detected and recorded. The firings of neuronal clusters are distinguished by extracting wavelet features of each spike shapes. Spatiotemporal coding features are investigated. Then mean firing rate and coefficient of heterogeneity of encoding, which is a new coefficient for characterizing neuronal encoding selectivity, are applied to quantify these features in all experiment sessions. The differences between features of MA ``nb" ``nx" and those of MA ``tb" ``tx" are obvious. Neuronal adaptivity and saturation phenomenon are observed when acupuncture with different frequencies are taken. However, neuronal selectivity of encoding is not obvious in different acupuncture frequencies.