Author: Liu Z1,2, Wu Y2, Li L3,4, Guo X2,3,4,5
Affiliation: <sup>1</sup>School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China.
<sup>2</sup>Shanghai Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, School of Physics and Materials Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
<sup>3</sup>School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
<sup>4</sup>National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
<sup>5</sup>Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, Ministry of Education, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Conference/Journal: Front Aging Neurosci.
Date published: 2018 Oct 23
Other:
Volume ID: 10 , Pages: 315 , Special Notes: doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2018.00315. eCollection 2018. , Word Count: 255
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.
KEYWORDS: emotion regulation; executive control network; functional magnetic resonance imaging; meditation; resting-state functional connectivity; tai chi
PMID: 30405392 PMCID: PMC6205982 DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2018.00315