Low-quality sleep in patients with insomnia is closely related to sleep architecture imbalance and neurotransmitter impairment. Acupuncture may reduce the duration of light sleep and its proportion, increase the time of deep sleep and rapid- eye-movement sleep as well as their proportions so as to modulate the sleep architecture for insomnia. The paper summarized the related studies of acupuncture for improving sleep architecture through regulating serotonin, norephinephrine, dopamine, γ-aminobutyric acid, acetylcholine and orexin; and explored the effects of acupuncture on the neurotransmitters and their specific performance in regulating sleep architecture. It is anticipated that the review may provide the literature evidences of acupuncture for improving sleep quality in patients with insomnia, and the approaches to the mechanism research of acupuncture for regulating sleep architecture.
失眠患者的低质量睡眠与睡眠结构失衡及神经递质紊乱密切相关。针刺可减少浅睡眠时间及其比例，增加深睡眠和快速眼动睡眠时间及其比例，从而调整睡眠结构。本文总结了针刺通过调节5-羟色胺、去甲肾上腺素、多巴胺、γ-氨基丁酸、乙酰胆碱、食欲素等改善睡眠结构的相关研究，探索针刺对神经递质的作用特点及神经递质调控睡眠结构的具体表现，以期为针刺改善失眠提供文献依据，并为针刺调整睡眠结构的机制研究提供思路。.
Keywords: Acupuncture; Neurotransmitter; Review; Sleep architecture.