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Acupuncture therapy has a positive effect in the treatment of amblyopia. This article summarizes findings of the research on brain mechanisms underlying the regulatory effect of acupuncture on visual plasticity of amblyopia. In a multi-system and multi-level viewpoints, we elaborated brain mechanism underlying the regulatory effect of acupuncture on visual plasticity in amblyopia from the perspective of ultrastructure, plasticity, electrical activities, neural coding and visual microcirculation of the neurons of the visual cortex, and the targeting points from the visual center to the effector organ.

Acupuncture has been found effective for the treatment of amblyopia, and its mechanism has been investigated. A review of recently published research results indicated that when used to treat amblyopia, acupuncture induced changes in the action of neurotransmitters in the visual system, promoted the secretion and synthesis of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and stimulated the expression of genes related to visual plasticity.

Objective: To explore electrophysiology mechanism of acupuncture for treatment and prevention of visual deprivation effect., Methods: Eighteen healthy 15-day Evans rats were randomly divided into a normal group, a model group and an acupuncture group, 6 rats in each one. Deprivation amblyopia model was established by monocular eyelid suture in the model group and acupuncture group. Acupuncture was applied at "Jingming" (BL 1), "Chengqi" (ST 1), "Qiuhou" (EX-HN 7) and "Cuanzhu" (BL 2) in the acupuncture group. The bilateral acupoints were selected alternately, one side for a day, and totally 14 days were required. The effect of acupuncture on visual evoked potential in different spatial frequencies was observed., Methods: Under three different kinds of spatial frequencies of 2 X 2, 4 X 4 and 8 X 8, compared with normal group, there was obvious visual deprivation effect in the model group where P1 peak latency was delayed (P<0.01) while N1 -P1 amplitude value was decreased (P<0.01). Compared with model group, P1 peak latency was obviously ahead of time (P<0.01) while N1-P1 amplitude value was increased (P<0.01) in the acupuncture group, there was no statistical significance compared with normal group (P>0.05). Under spatial frequency of 4 X 4, N1-P1 amplitude value was maximum in the normal group and acupuncture group. With this spatial frequency the rat's eye had best resolving ability, indicating it could be the best spatial frequency for rat visual system., Conclusion: The visual system has obvious electrophysiology plasticity in sensitive period. Acupuncture treatment could adjust visual deprivation-induced suppression and slow of visual response in order to antagonism deprivation effect.