Age‐related positive emotional reactivity decline associated with the anterior insula based resting‐state functional connectivity

Figures

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  FIGURE 1. Individuals flow diagram and sample age distribution. (a) The inclusion criteria of the participants and the number of participants included in the final analysis. (b) The 243 participants retained from the Cambridge Center for Age and Neuroscience (Cam–CAN) database sufficiently spanned ages 18–88, and there were no significant differences in age between the genders of the participants (t = −1.427, p = .155).

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  FIGURE 2. Emotion reactivity and regulation task. In the WATCH condition (example in the above figure), participants were asked to simply watch the films and allow their emotions to arise naturally. In the REGULATE condition, participants were asked to reappraise their emotions about a negative film by changing the way they thought about the content of the film. After each film clip, participants rated the positive and negative effects they felt during the film on two valence scales and their compliance with the task instructions.

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  FIGURE 3. Insula subregions in Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) standard space. The picture shows insula subregions seeds in the MNI standard space, including the left AI (MNI = −32, 16, 6; red); the left MI (MNI = −38, 2, 8; blue); the left PI (MNI = −39, −15, 1; yellow); the right AI (MNI = 32, 16, 6; red); the right MI (MNI = 38, 2, 8; blue); and the right PI (MNI = 39, −15, 8; yellow). AI = anterior insula; MI = middle insula; PI = posterior insula.

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  FIGURE 4. Emotional reactivity decreased with age. Scatterplots depicting the correlations between age and emotional reactivity after control gender and mean FD. (a, b) The positive emotional reactivity decreased with age; (c) the negative emotional reactivity to positive stimuli shows a certain downward trend but the correlation is not significant; and (d) the negative emotional reactivity to negative stimuli decreased with age.

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  FIGURE 5. Results of the voxel‐based morphometry (VBM) analysis. (a, d) The left/right insula in the AAL atlas; (b, e) the gray matter volume (GMV) of the bilateral insula decreased significantly with age; and (c, f) the GMV of the bilateral insula increased with positive emotional reactivity. Partial correlation analyses all included gender, head movement, and total intracranial volume (TIV) as covariates. L, left hemisphere; R, right hemisphere.

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  FIGURE 6. Age‐related whole brain functional connectivity in the insula subregions. Whole brain functional connectivity was significantly associated with age in six insula subregions (corrected for GRF, voxel p < .001, cluster p < .05, family‐wise error). Clusters with positive and negative connectivity are shown in warm and cool colors, respectively. L, left hemisphere; R, right hemisphere.

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  FIGURE 7. Results of mediation analysis. The mediating effect of age on positive emotional reactivity to watching positive films through anterior insula (AI). PosFlim_PosER, positive emotional reactivity to watching positive films. (*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001).