Effects of Electroacupuncture on Executive Control Function in Patients with Post-Stroke Cognitive Impairment: A Randomized Controlled Trial (Preprint)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND Cognitive function, inhibitory control (IC), cognitive flexibility (CF), working memory (WM), and attention are higher-level executive control functions with a complex relationship. There is only limited evidence on the effectiveness of electroacupuncture at acupoints GV20 and GV24 to improve executive control function. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of electroacupuncture at acupoints GV20 and GV24 to alleviate deficits in executive control. METHODS A single-blind randomized controlled trial was conducted at the First Affiliated Hospital of Henan University of Chinese Medicine involving 76 patients with post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) aged 18 to 74 years. The participants were randomly assigned to either the electroacupuncture group or the conventional treatment group at a 1:1 ratio, with 38 individuals in each group. In addition to receiving conventional treatment, the electroacupuncture group underwent electroacupuncture at acupoints GV20 and GV24 for 30 minutes, 5 times a week, for 4 weeks. Participants were assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), Trail Making Test (TMT), Stroop Color Word Test (SCWT), and Stroke Specific Quality of Life Scale (SSQOL) both before and after intervention. RESULTS Using an intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis, both the electroacupuncture and control groups demonstrated significant improvements in executive control function, overall cognitive function, and activities of daily living compared to baseline. Specifically, the electroacupuncture group exhibited highly significant improvements in TMT-A (Z=−4.859, OR −23, 95% CI −29.50 to −17.50, P <.001), TMT-B (Z=−5.316, OR −34, 95% CI −42.50 to −28.00, P <.001), SCWT-W (Z=−5.375, OR −28, 95% CI −34.00 to −22.50, P <.001), and SCWT-CW scores (Z=−5.178, OR −44, 95% CI −59.00 to −34.50, P <.001). In the control group, significant improvements were observed in TMT-A (Z=−3.785, OR −8, 95% CI −11.00 to −4.50, P <.001) and SCWT-W scores (T=3.893, OR 8.158, 95% CI 3.912 to 12.404, P <.001), while TMT-B (Z=−2.882, OR −11.50, 95% CI −21.00 to −4.00, P =.004) and SCWT-CW scores (Z=−2.448, OR −12, 95% CI −21.00 to −2.00, P =.025) showed significant enhancements. Both groups experienced significant improvements in MoCA, and SS-QOL scores (P <.001) compared to baseline. Notably, when comparing the electroacupuncture group to the control group, the electroacupuncture group exhibited highly significant improvements in SCWT-W scores (Z=−3.414, OR 24, 95% CI 10 to 36, P <.001) and significant enhancements in MoCA (t=−2.908, OR −2.396, 95% CI −4.038 to −0.754, P =.005), SSQOL (T=−2.104, OR −13.921, 95% CI −27.103 to −0.739, P =.039), and SCWT-CW scores (Z=−2.244, OR 45, 95% CI 6 to 83, P =.025). CONCLUSIONS Electroacupuncture at acupoints GV20 and GV24 demonstrated significant efficacy in ameliorating executive control deficits in PSCI patients. This intervention effectively restored key executive control functions, such as IC, CF, attention, and WM, while also enhancing overall cognitive function and the activities of daily living following a stroke. CLINICALTRIAL ChiCTR2300074400
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".