Spiking Irregularities of Acupuncture Electrical Signals in Spinal Dorsal

Neural system characterizes information in external stimulations by spatiotemporal encoding. When stimulated by the acupuncture, the neural system can evoke irregular electrical signals. In order to reveal the underlying mechanisms about the conduction and function of acupuncture, experiments are designed that different types of manual acupuncture (MA) manipulations and different frequencies of MA manipulations are taken at 'Zusanli' points of experiment rats, and the induced electrical signals in spinal dorsal root ganglion are detected and recorded. The concept of the inters pike interval (ISI) is used for the study of the acupuncture electrical signals. The ISI distribution is fit well by Gamma distribution, which has two parameters, one is time-dependent firing rate and the other one is a shape parameter characterizing spiking irregularities. The shape parameter is estimated as the measure of spiking irregularities and used to identify the type of MA manipulations or analysis frequency adaption of MA manipulations.