BRAIN RESPONSE IN THE ELDERLY AFTER TAI CHI PRACTICE ASSESSED WITH NEUROIMAGING TECHNIQUES: A LITERATURE REVIEW

H. Liu¹, Y. Salem^2,3

¹Allen College, Waterloo, United States, ²Hofstra University, Long Island, United States, ³Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt

Background: Tai Chi (TC) has been often provided to older adults by rehabilitation professionals for medical dysfunction and anti-aging healthcare. In the last 10years,there has been an increase in the number of studies examining the effects of TC onbrainas assessed byneuroimaging including near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), and structure and functional magnetic resonating imaging (sMRI & fMRI).

Purpose: The purpose of this literature review is to evaluate how TC practice may affect the brain in the elderly as assessed by neuroimaging techniques.

Methods: A comprehensive literature search was conducted and included the following search engines: Pubmed, Scopus, Medline (US National Library of Medicine),the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro), the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register (Cochrane Library), Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and the oversea English version of China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI).

Results: Fifteen articles from 12 studies were qualified and retrieved for final review. The results showedincreased volume of cortical grey matter, improved neural activity, and increased neural connectivity in different brain regions, including the frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes, followed by cerebellum and thalamus. Intriguingly, the longer one practices TC, the more his/her brain areas may be altered. Such neural findings after TC practice are often associated with neurobehavioral improvements in attention, cognitive execution, memory, emotion, and risk-taking behaviors.

Conclusions: Tai Chi is a promising exercise that is able to improve morphological capability and neurofunctional activity in the brain in the elderly. These improvements seem to be associated with time-length of TC practice.Future studies are needed to assess how functionally the brain areas may be altered, integrated and/or specialized in longer longitudinal TC studies.

Implications: The results of this study showed that Tai Chi can be a great exercise program to improve the neural dysfunctions in older adults practicing TC.

Funding acknowledgements: None

Keywords:
Tai Chi exercise, Brain
Older adults
Neuroimaging

Topics:
Older people
Health promotion & wellbeing/healthy ageing/physical activity
Neurology

Did this work require ethics approval? No

Reason: This is a literature review study that does not include not require human subject approval