Exploration of spleen storing yi and governing si theory from perspectives of emotional psychology and immune cytokine theory.

"The spleen storing yi (overall mental activities) and governing si (thoughts)" is one of the theoretical guiding ideologies in TCM treatment of emotional diseases. Although there is a wealth of clinical experience to support its feasibility, its connotation is still ambiguous with a lacking in objective indicators, resulting in difficulty in wide clinical application. In this paper, by comparing this theory with corresponding knowledge in modern emotional psychology, the commonality and individuality are compared. Based on that, the theory is further interpreted from the three levels of cognition, physiology and expression. Then combined with modern immune cytokine theory, the relationship between emotion and spleen is analyzed, and it's found that emotion is closely related to the spleen with bidirectional adjustment. By adopting such a thinking mode to combine the spleen and emotion, a better clinical efficacy may be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]