Participants
neurological or psychiatric disorders
DISEASE
The study included 70 healthy male subjects (simulated patients) which were recruited at the campus of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (CDUTCM) from July 2021 to June 2022 The participants should meet all the following criteria: (1) were right‐handed and aged from 18 to 40 years, (2) had no history of neurological or psychiatric disorders and were evaluated with comprehensive history taking, physical examinations, and laboratory tests to exclude the potential disease, (3) did not participate in any other clinical trial. These “patients” were randomly assigned to either verum acupuncture group (VAG) or sham acupuncture group (SAG) in a 1:1 ratio.One age‐matched licensed female acupuncturist with more than 5 years of clinical experience was recruited from the Affiliated Hospital of CDUTCM. This acupuncturist performed acupuncture manipulations on all the 70 subjects, forming 70 “patient”–acupuncturist dyads in total.All participants signed the informed consent form before the experiment. Ethical approval (No. 2021QKL‐001) was granted by the Institutional Review Board of Affiliated Hospital of CDUTCM. This study was registered at Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (identifier: ChiCTR2100051893).