心脑联系的研究越来越广泛，我们前期研究发现了心肌缺血性损伤可以引起大脑皮质、海马和下丘脑部分脑区的超微结构和功能变化，且电针心经经穴具有保护心脑损伤的作用，但作用途径和作用机制尚不清楚；心脏如何向大脑发送指令信息，这些信息在中枢的整合途径如何，以及对中枢有什么样的反应仍不明确。基于此我们提出假说“心脑相对特异的神经联系是心经经穴效应的结构和功能基础”，依据光敏蛋白具有的低损伤、兴奋抑制双向调节、高时空分辨、可定量重复的特点，本项目拟采用光遗传学技术对心肌缺血模型大鼠下丘脑室旁核定点控制，观察心经经穴效应、心功能和脑功能的变化情况，用神经元活动的单细胞记录验证核团作用；同时结合可跨突触传播的病毒示踪技术，分别对心经原穴（脏腑原气所出之处）、心脏和脑组织进行病毒注射后，观察病毒传播途径，分析神经网络，以期窥探心经经穴-心-脑联系的可能神经机制，为探索经脉脏腑与脑相关提供实验支持。

More and more studies had concerned with the heart-brain connection, and our previously studies had indicated that ischemic myocardial injury could cause the changes in microstructure and function of cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus in rats, and also electroacupuncture acupoints of Heart Meridian had effects on reducing injury and protect heart and brain, but the mechanism and pathway are not clear. Moreover, it is still unclear that how information transfer from heart to brain, and how to integrate these messages and affect to the function of central nervous. Based on our background knowledge of heart and brain, we hypothesis that correlatively neural relations between heart and brain is the structure and functional foundations of effect of points in heart meridian and heart-brain connections. Because of the characteristics of that slightly injury, double-way regulation of excite and inhibit neuroactivity, high spatial resolution, and able to quantitatively repeat of optogenetic method, we are going to apply optogenetic method to control certain neuron in hypothalamus of acute myocardial ischemia model rat, and observe the changes of the heart meridian effect, heart function and brain function, to record and analyze single neuron activity to certify the function of neuron, and combine with virus tracer technology, to observe the spread of virus in neural circuit after inject virus into heart, Yuan-point, which is the place where the primordial Qi of Zang and Fu comes out, of Heart Meridian, brain separately. In order to look for the neural basis between acupoints of Heart Meridian, heart and brain, and provide experimental support for correlation among the meridian, Zang and Fu and brain.