auriculotherapy

Auriculotherapy (also auricular therapy, ear acupuncture, and auriculoacupuncture) is a form of alternative medicine based on the idea that the ear is a micro system and an external organ, which reflects the entire body, represented on the auricle, the outer portion of the ear. Conditions affecting the person's physical, mental, or emotional health are assumed to be treatable by stimulating the surface of the ear exclusively. Similar mappings are used by several modalities, including the practices of reflexology and iridology. These mappings are not based on or supported by any medical or scientific evidence, and are therefore considered to be pseudoscience.

==History and development== French neurologist Paul Nogier invented auriculotherapy in 1957. Nogier developed a phrenological method of projection of a fetal Homunculus on the ear and published what he called the "Vascular Autonomic Signal" which measured a change in the amplitude of the pulse. That mechanism would only produce a signal upon the introduction of new information to the electromagnetic field of the patient. Nogier cited a 'principle of matching resonance' which he could use the vascular autonomic signal to detect the active points of the auricular microsystem.