Long-Term Tai Chi Exercise Slows the Degeneration of Functional Specialization Within Prefrontal Cortex in Older
Jiahao Pan1, Alexandar Guo2, Shuqi Zhang3,4
1School of Physical Education, Xinjiang Normal University, Urumqi, XJ, China.
Objectives:
This study investigated whether older adults with Tai Chi (TC) exercise exhibited similar dynamic postural stability and prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation as young adults during precision fitting tasks.
Methods:
Gender-matched groups of TC practitioners, sedentary healthy older adults, and young adults were recruited. There were 15 participants for each group. Each participant performed four different fitting tasks: close-large, close-small, far-large, and far-small conditions.
Results:
The TC group showed better dynamic postural stability in the close-large condition, along with lower right dorsolateral PFC and left dorsomedial PFC activation than the sedentary healthy older adults group in the far condition (p < .05). However, the TC group presented worse dynamic postural stability in the far-small condition and greater right dorsolateral PFC and left dorsomedial PFC activation in the close condition than the young adults group (p < .05). The sedentary healthy older adults group had worse dynamic postural stability in all of the conditions and greater right dorsolateral PFC and left dorsomedial PFC activation than the young adults group in both close and far conditions (p < .05).
Conclusion:
These observations suggest that TC exercise could mitigate the degeneration of functional neural specialization within the PFC, which helps improve dynamic postural stability during precision fitting tasks.
Significance:
Integrating TC into community-based health and wellness programs can offer older adults an accessible, engaging, and effective way to slow the degeneration of postural automaticity.
