Scientists have identified the exact neural pathway that links chronic pain to anxiety — and shown that electroacupuncture reactivates it. This may explain something acupuncturists have observed for centuries.
If you've ever experienced chronic pain, you know that it rarely comes alone. Anxiety follows it like a shadow — making the pain feel worse, making sleep impossible, making everything harder. Until now, science understood that these two conditions were connected but couldn't pinpoint exactly how or why. A new study published this week has found the answer. And what they found about electroacupuncture will surprise you.
Neuropathic pain — the kind that comes from damaged or misfiring nerves — affects roughly one in ten people globally. What makes it particularly cruel is this: up to 60% of those people also develop anxiety or mood disorders. The pain triggers anxiety. The anxiety amplifies the pain. The two conditions trap each other in a loop that makes both much harder to treat.
Doctors have long known this link exists. What they couldn't explain was the precise biological wiring behind it. Researchers from Zhejiang Chinese Medical University set out to find it — and they did.
Using a mouse model of neuropathic pain caused by partial nerve injury, the researchers used viral tracing, chemogenetics and fibre photometry — some of the most sophisticated tools available in neuroscience — to map what happens in the brain when chronic pain develops.
They identified a direct neural connection between two brain regions: the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) and the basolateral amygdala (BLA). The DRN is the brain's primary source of serotonin — the neurotransmitter most associated with mood, calm and wellbeing. The BLA is a key part of the amygdala, the brain's emotional processing centre, where fear and anxiety are generated.
In healthy mice, this DRN→BLA circuit carries serotonin signals that regulate emotional responses to pain. In mice with neuropathic pain, these serotonin neurons became abnormally quiet — and when that happened, both pain sensitivity and anxiety-like behaviours increased significantly. The circuit, when silenced, left the emotional brain without its calming signal.
After just six sessions of electroacupuncture — delivered at the classic points ST36 (Zusanli, on the lower leg) and SP6 (Sanyinjiao, above the inner ankle) at 100Hz over several days — the serotonin neurons in the DRN woke up again. Pain thresholds increased measurably. The mice spent less time in anxious, avoidance behaviour. Brain imaging confirmed that the previously silenced circuit was active again.
But the finding that made this study genuinely remarkable was what happened next. The researchers chemogenetically blocked the DRN→BLA circuit in a separate group of mice — essentially switching it off artificially — and then gave them electroacupuncture. This time, it produced no benefit at all. Neither the pain nor the anxiety improved. The circuit wasn't just associated with the effect. It was required for it.
"Instead of just dampening pain signals anywhere in the brain, electroacupuncture seems to rebalance a system that controls both sensation and emotion. That is why it can tackle two problems at once."
— Researchers, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University · Acupuncture Research, 2026At AcuRodos, patients who come in with chronic pain almost always mention anxiety in the same breath — often as an afterthought, as if it's embarrassing to admit. Back pain plus terrible sleep. Sciatica plus constant worry. Migraines plus a sense of dread before each episode. These are not separate problems. This research now confirms they share a biological root.
Electroacupuncture — the specific modality studied here — is a standard part of our clinical toolkit. We offer it at AcuRodos as a 50-minute session (€65) and as part of our 90-Day Neuro-Recovery & Structural Reset Protocol for complex or long-standing conditions. The points used in this study, ST36 and SP6, are among the most commonly used in clinical practice globally and are included in most of our treatment protocols.
This doesn't mean every patient who books an electroacupuncture session will experience the same results as this trial. Clinical outcomes are individual, this was a mouse model, and human neuroscience is always more complex. But the circuit the researchers identified is real, it exists in the human brain, and the serotonin system it involves is exactly the same one targeted by many antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications — just activated through a completely different, needle-based route.
Chinese medicine has treated pain and emotional disturbance together for centuries — not because practitioners understood serotonin pathways, but because clinical observation showed, again and again, that they respond to the same treatment. In TCM theory, the Liver governs both the smooth flow of Qi (which relates to pain when stagnated) and the regulation of emotions (which relates to anxiety when imbalanced). Points like SP6 and ST36 are specifically chosen to address both simultaneously. Western neuroscience has now identified the biological reason why.
This was a mouse study using a neuropathic pain model. It is mechanism research — it tells us how electroacupuncture works at the neural circuit level, not that it definitively cures human anxiety or chronic pain. Human clinical trials are the next step. However, the DRN→BLA serotonin circuit identified exists in the human brain and is well-established in human neuroscience. This study provides a credible, peer-reviewed mechanistic explanation for effects that have been observed in human clinical trials for years.
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Source: Zhejiang Chinese Medical University et al. (2026). DRN5-HT-BLA circuit involvement in electroacupuncture treatment of neuropathic pain and anxiety. Acupuncture Research. DOI: 10.13702/j.1000-0607.20250181. Reported by Newswise, 24 June 2026. This blog post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.