Because late amplitudes of somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) to noxious stimuli are thought to correlate with the subjective experience of pain intensity, German researchers designed a study to detect changes of these SEPs before and after acupuncture in a double-blinded fashion. A total of 16 volunteers were anaesthetised by propofol and exposed to painful electric stimuli to the right forefinger. Then, blinded to the research team, the acupuncture group (n = 8) was treated with electric needle acupuncture over 15 min at analgesic points of the leg, whereas the sham group (n = 8) received no treatment. Thereafter, nociceptive stimulation was repeated. SEPs were recorded during each noxious stimulation from the vertex Cz, and latencies and amplitudes of the N150 and P260 components were analysed by analysis of variance. P260 amplitudes decreased from 4.40 ± 2.76 μV (mean ± SD) before treatment to 1.67 ± 1.21 μV after treatment (P < 0.05), whereas amplitudes of the sham group remained unchanged (2.64 ± 0.94 μV before vs. 2.54 ± 1.54 μV after treatment).