Acupuncture to the ear may help lessen pain from migraines and their impact on daily life, according to new research presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum 2026 in Barcelona, Spain.

A randomised clinical trial of the treatment, called auriculotherapy, found that migraines were less painful immediately after treatment and 30 days later, compared with the pain experienced beforehand. The impact of migraines on daily life also improved. However, when researchers compared the group receiving real auriculotherapy against a sham-treatment group, they found no statistically significant difference between the two — meaning the study could not show that auriculotherapy itself was superior to the sham procedure.

The study, led by Fernanda Belle, a physiotherapist in the Experimental Neuroscience laboratory at the University of Southern Santa Catarina (UNISUL) in Palhoça, Brazil, also tracked changes in oxygenation levels in the prefrontal cortex of participants’ brains over the course of the study, measured using hemoencephalography (HEG®), a non-invasive technology that uses near-infrared spectroscopy to measure blood flow in the brain as an indirect gauge of neural activity.

“Both groups improved over time, which may suggest that auricular stimulation, even when non-specific, can influence pain-related outcomes,” Ms Belle said, adding that the research shows “it is possible to objectively monitor aspects of brain function in women with chronic migraine.”

“These results are encouraging, especially because we observed improvement in clinical outcomes during follow-up, with a more consistent effect on pain in the group that received auriculotherapy,” Belle said. She explained the scale of the problem the trial is addressing: “Migraine is a highly prevalent and disabling condition… It also affects women approximately three times more often than men, probably due in part to hormonal influences.”

Inside the Trial

Belle recruited 68 women who had a clinical diagnosis of migraine for at least one year, all of whom experienced migraines on 15 or more days a month. Migraines were characterised by recurrent moderate to severe headaches, accompanied by symptoms such as nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, and sometimes aura — a neurological symptom that can include visual disturbances such as flashing lights or zigzag lines. Researchers assessed pain using the McGill Pain Questionnaire and the impact on daily life using the Headache Impact Test (HIT-6), at three points: before treatment began, immediately after treatment, and 30 days later.

Patients were randomly assigned to receive eight sessions of auriculotherapy or the sham treatment over eight weeks. Auriculotherapy involved semi-permanent needles placed at specific points on the ear selected according to the protocol for migraine, followed by mustard seeds applied to the same points to maintain stimulation until the next session. The sham procedure involved semi-permanent needles applied to ear points unrelated to migraine — corresponding instead to the fingers, wrist, knee, arm, shoulder, lung, lower limbs and spine — with mustard seeds applied the same way. Patients did not know which procedure they were receiving; the therapist did, but the outcome assessors and statisticians were blinded to group allocation.

In the auriculotherapy group, the average pain score decreased from 50.5 before the sessions to 44.7 immediately after, and to 41 after 30 days — a reduction of roughly 11% at the end of treatment and 18% at the 30-day follow-up. In the sham group, pain scores decreased from 50.2 to 44.3 immediately after sessions and to 43.9 after 30 days, reductions of about 12% and 13% respectively. At the 30-day follow-up, pain scores were significantly lower than before treatment in both groups, but the difference between the groups was not statistically significant.

“We also observed a reduction in the impact of migraine on daily life,” Belle said. “In the auriculotherapy group, the average HIT-6 score decreased from 66.1 before the sessions to 60.7 immediately after the sessions and to 59.5 at 30 days. In the sham group, the average score decreased from 65.8 to 59.2 after the sessions and was 59.3 at 30 days. Across both groups, this represents reductions of approximately 8% to 10%.”

Belle offered a possible explanation for why stimulating the ear, even at non-specific points, might influence migraine outcomes at all: “The ear has strong links to networks of nerve cells, including connections with the vagus nerve, the trigeminal nerve and cervical nerves, which are involved in pain regulation, autonomic activity and inflammatory responses.”

Professor Christina Dalla from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, chair of the FENS Forum communication committee, was not involved in the research. “Well-conducted, randomised controlled trials of the condition are rare so, as a neuropsychopharmacologist, I am pleased that this study is being presented at the FENS Forum,” she said.

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Article Title: Auriculotherapy modulates cerebral hemodynamics and pain in women with migraine: a randomized double-blind trial
Presented: FENS Forum 2026, Friday 10 July
Funding: Experimental Neuroscience Laboratory (LaNEx), the Graduate Program in Health Sciences at the University of Southern Santa Catarina (UNISUL), Brazil; Fernanda Belle is a PhD student supported by a scholarship from the Support Program for Graduate Studies in Community Higher Education Institutions (PROSUC), funded by the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES)