Functional Connectivity Within the Executive Control Network Mediates the Effects of Long-Term Tai Chi Exercise on Elders’ Emotion Regulation

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.