There are a lot of cleverly designed trials to measure the benefits of acupuncture vs placebo.
I find this study to be one of the most interesting ones and worth sharing on this forum.
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/phantom-acupuncture/"There is now a new line of evidence that is very interesting, and one that I had not previously considered – phantom acupuncture. A recent study looked at performing acupuncture on a phantom limb. They used a now well-established technique of tricking the brain into incorporating a dummy body part as if it were real. They placed subjects in front of a table so that one of their arms was below the table, with a rubber arm above the table placed in such a way that visually the rubber arm looked like their own arm. They then stroke the rubber arm and the subjects real arm simultaneously. The brain sees and feels the rubber arm being stroked, and this sensory feedback is often enough for the brain to create the sensation of ownership over the rubber arm.
The researchers then placed acupuncture needles into the rubber arm that subjects had incorporated as their own. Obviously there is no possibility of any physiological response from the needle penetrating the rubber arm. I further think it is reasonable to conclude that placing a needle into a rubber arm cannot activate acupuncture points (if they existed) or alter Qi (if it existed). This experiment nicely eliminates local physiological responses and any Qi responses to the needles.
The researchers performed functional MRI scanning (fMRI) on subjects while needles were placed in their phantom rubber limbs. Keep in mind that fMRI research involves collecting lots of data and aggregating it. So the researchers are not looking at brain reactions in real time, just the aggregate brain activity of many subjects over many trials. They then look for statistical associations in the activity.
What they found was the same brain activation that previous studies have found with acupuncture of real limbs."
The author gives the important caveat that as with all science, this is a preliminary result which may not hold up after additional trials.
And unfortunately, there were only 17 test subjects, so it's hard to draw a definitive conclusion.
It's pretty smart to combine fMRI and phantom limb incorporation in this way!
