<p style="text-align: center;">YANG Yiling，HUANG Jianpeng，JIANG Li，LIU Jianhua</p><p style="text-align: center;">（Second Hospital of Guangzhou Traditional Chinese Medicine University, Guangzhou 510000, China）</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Abstract</strong>:&nbsp; Previous studies have shown that there were many common structures between the neural&nbsp; network&nbsp; of&nbsp; pain&nbsp; and&nbsp; memory,&nbsp; and&nbsp; the&nbsp; main&nbsp; structure&nbsp; of the&nbsp; pain&nbsp; is also&nbsp; a&nbsp; part&nbsp; of&nbsp; the memory network.&nbsp; The chronic pain was characterized by the recurrent attacks and associated with persistent ectopic impulse, which caused the change between the synaptic structure and function&nbsp; based&nbsp; on&nbsp; the&nbsp; nerve&nbsp; activity&nbsp; dependent.&nbsp; These&nbsp; changes&nbsp; might&nbsp; induce&nbsp; long-term potentiation of synaptic transmission (one of the important mechanisms of memory formation), and&nbsp; ultimately&nbsp; leading&nbsp; to&nbsp; the&nbsp; change&nbsp; of&nbsp; central&nbsp; nervous&nbsp; system&nbsp; to&nbsp; produce&nbsp; “pain&nbsp; memory”.Acupuncture&nbsp; is&nbsp; one&nbsp; of&nbsp; the&nbsp; effective&nbsp; means&nbsp; to&nbsp; treat&nbsp; chronic&nbsp; pain.&nbsp; It&nbsp; has&nbsp; been&nbsp; proved&nbsp; that acupuncture can affect the area of spinal cord dorsal horn, hippocampus, cingulate gyrus and other&nbsp; related&nbsp; areas.&nbsp; The&nbsp; possible&nbsp; mechanisms&nbsp; of&nbsp; action&nbsp; include&nbsp; opioid&nbsp; induced&nbsp; analgesia, activation of glial cells, and the expression of BDNF. In this paper, we systematically introduce the brain structures and stage of “pain memory” and the mechanisms of acupuncture intervention on synaptic plasticity of chronic pain are also reviewed.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Key words</strong>: Acupuncture, Chronic pain, Acupuncture, Plasticity , Memory, Review</p><p><br/></p>