PTEN and ischemic stroke: To test how EA affects the mTOR and PTEN pathways after ischemic stroke, we used Western blotting to detect total AKT (t-AKT), phosphorylated AKT (p-AKT), total mTOR (t-mTOR), phosphorylated mTOR (p-mTOR), total S6 (t-S6), phosphorylated S6 (p-S6), total PTEN (t-PTEN), and phosphorylated PTEN (p-PTEN) expression (Figure 6(a)).