Abstract
Previous research has identified the effects of tai chi exercise on elders’ executive control or on their emotion regulation. However, few works have attempted to reveal the relationships between tai chi, executive control, and emotion regulation in the same study. The current resting-state study investigated whether the impact of tai chi on elders’ emotion regulation was mediated by the resting-state functional connectivity within the executive control network. A total of 26 elders with long-term tai chi experience and 26 demographically matched healthy elders were recruited. After the resting-state scan, both groups were required to complete a series of questionnaires, including the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), and a sequential decision task, which offered an index of the subjects’ emotion-regulation ability by calculating how their emotional response could be affected by the objective outcomes of their decisions. Compared to the control group, the tai chi group showed higher levels of non-judgment of inner experiences (a component of the FFMQ), stronger emotion-regulation ability, and a weaker resting-state functional connectivity between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Moreover, the functional connectivity between the DLPFC and the MFG in the tai chi group fully mediated the impact of non-judgment of inner experience on their emotion-regulation ability. These findings highlighted that the modulation of non-judgment of inner experience on long-term tai chi practitioners’ emotion regulation was achieved through decreased functional connectivity within the executive control network.
Highlights
Emotional suffering in older adults decreases their quality of life and increases their risk for mental disease, such as depression and anxiety (Berkman et al, 1986; Rozzini et al, 2001)
Further analysis found the significant correlation between non-judgment of inner experience and K-value in the tai chi group (r = −0.481, p < 0.05)
The results revealed that the subjects in the tai chi group showed significantly decreased resting-state functional connectivity between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the left thalamus (MNI −20 −14 6), left ventral striatum (MNI −26 −8 2), and right middle frontal gyrus (MFG) (MNI 3848 10) compared to the subjects in the control group (Figure 3 and Table 3)
Summary
Emotional suffering in older adults decreases their quality of life and increases their risk for mental disease, such as depression and anxiety (Berkman et al, 1986; Rozzini et al, 2001). The pathology of brain networks in cognitive impairment in older adults has been investigated by applying resting-state functional connectivity (Liu et al, 2015; Liu F. et al, 2017; Lin et al, 2018) Most of these studies revealed that a key brain network in cognitive impairment was the executive control network, which influences many domains of life, such as academic success and healthy eating (Robinson et al, 2010; Hofmann et al, 2012). The current resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study (containing a tai chi group and a control group) aimed to replicate previous findings that meditative components in tai chi were related to enhanced executive control and stronger emotion regulation. The main focus of the current study was to examine whether the impact of the meditative component of tai chi on emotion regulation was mediated by the functional connectivity between the DLPFC (a core region of the executive control network) (Sheline et al, 2010) and the frontal regions.
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