<p style="text-align: center;">SHE Chen，W ANG Jia, HA Lijuan，CUI Jingjing，XU Dongsheng，BAI Wanzhu&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: center;">(1 Institute of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing&nbsp;100700, China; 2 Changchun University of Chinese Medicine, Changchun 130117)&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Abstract:</strong> <strong>Objective:</strong> To analysis the research progress and characteristics of neural tracing technique for the&nbsp; morphological&nbsp; study&nbsp; of&nbsp; acupuncture,&nbsp; and&nbsp; reveal&nbsp; the&nbsp; effect&nbsp; of&nbsp; this&nbsp; technology,&nbsp; also&nbsp; provide neuroanatomical evidences for the optimization of morphological research plans. Methods: Five databases were searched from their inception: CNKI (1979-2017), Wan-Fang Data (1990-2017), VIP Data (1990-2017)&nbsp; and&nbsp; PUBMED&nbsp; (1989-2017).&nbsp; Studies related&nbsp; to&nbsp; the&nbsp; neural&nbsp; tracing&nbsp; technique&nbsp; for&nbsp; the&nbsp; acupuncture researches were included. The&nbsp; research status&nbsp; on neural tracing technique&nbsp; for acupuncture researches would be analyzed from the aspects of acupuncture points, meridians, acupoint-visceral correlation and chemical feature.&nbsp;<strong> Results</strong>:&nbsp; Ninety-two&nbsp; researches&nbsp; were&nbsp; included&nbsp; after&nbsp; electronic&nbsp; searching.&nbsp; The&nbsp; neural&nbsp; tracing technique&nbsp; had been used in the field of acupuncture for almost 34 years (1983-2007). The studies mainly focused&nbsp; on&nbsp; the&nbsp; innervations&nbsp; of&nbsp; acupuncture&nbsp; points&nbsp; and&nbsp; meridians,&nbsp; the&nbsp; neuroanatomical&nbsp; correlation&nbsp; of acupuncture points and visceral, the&nbsp; chemical feature&nbsp; of&nbsp; acupuncture&nbsp; points and the other aspects. Rats, rabbits and cats were the commonly used animals, while SD rats were the most frequently used ones, which took up to 54.3% (50/92).&nbsp; HRP and CTB were the mainly applied neural tracers, and the percentage were 55.4% (51/92) and 18.5%(17/92), respectively. Acupuncture points were the most commonly used positions for injection, with a percentage of 53.3% (49/92). Among all&nbsp; the 63 acupuncture points, ST36 (Zusanli) was the most frequently used acupuncture point, which accounted for 17.5% (11/63). The survival time for animals&nbsp; was&nbsp; range&nbsp; from&nbsp; 1&nbsp; day&nbsp; to&nbsp; 12&nbsp; weeks.&nbsp; About&nbsp; 43.5%&nbsp; (40/92)&nbsp; researches&nbsp; perfused&nbsp; with&nbsp; 4% paraformaldehyde, which had took up the largest&nbsp; portion. Besides, the main neural labeling were neurons and nerve fibers. <strong>Conclusions</strong>: Over 30 years, the neural tracing technique has been widely applied in the morphological&nbsp; studies of acupuncture. By using this technology, the innervations of acupuncture points and meridians can be revealed, and the neuroanatomical correlation between acupoint and visceral can also be illustrated.&nbsp; Besides,&nbsp; by&nbsp; analyzing&nbsp; the&nbsp; neural&nbsp; pathways&nbsp; and&nbsp; the&nbsp; chemical&nbsp; feature,&nbsp; the&nbsp; ways&nbsp; in&nbsp; which acupuncture may effect can be further obtained. These can not only promote the further development of the acupuncture&nbsp; morphological&nbsp; research,&nbsp; but&nbsp; also&nbsp; provide&nbsp; the&nbsp; neuroanatomical&nbsp; evidences&nbsp; for&nbsp; the&nbsp; targeted selection of acupuncture points for clinical treatment.</p><p><strong>Key words</strong>: acupuncture, neural tracing technique, morphology, neural pathway</p><p><br/></p>