Thought control ability (TCA) refers to the ability to exclude unwanted thoughts. There has been consistent evidence on the protective effect of TCA on anxiety, that higher TCA is associated with lower anxiety. However, the underlying neural mechanism remains unclear. In this study, with a large sample (N = 495), we investigated how seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) mediates the relationship between TCA and anxiety. Our behaviour results replicated previous findings that TCA is negatively associated with trait anxiety after controlling for gender, age, and depression. More importantly, the RSFC results revealed that TCA is negatively associated with the left amygdala - left frontal pole (LA-LFP), left amygdala - left inferior temporal gyrus (LA-LITG), and left hippocampus - left inferior frontal gyrus (LH-LIFG) connectivity. In addition, a mediation analysis demonstrated that the LA-LFP and LA-LITG connectivity in particular mediated the influence of TCA on trait anxiety. Overall, our study extends previous research by revealing the neural bases underlying the protective effect of TCA on anxiety and pinpointing specific mediating RSFC pathways. Future studies could explore whether targeted TCA training (behavioural or neural) can help alleviate anxiety.

思想控制能力（TCA）是指排除不想要的想法的能力。关于 TCA 对焦虑的保护作用已有一致的证据，较高的 TCA 与较低的焦虑相关。然而，潜在的神经机制仍不清楚。在这项研究中，我们使用大样本 (N = 495) 研究了基于种子的静息状态功能连接 (RSFC) 如何调节 TCA 与焦虑之间的关系。我们的行为结果重复了之前的发现，即在控制性别、年龄和抑郁后，TCA 与特质焦虑呈负相关。更重要的是，RSFC结果显示TCA与左杏仁核-左额极（LA-LFP）、左杏仁核-左颞下回（LA-LITG）、左海马-左额下回（LH- LIFG）连通性。此外，中介分析表明，LA-LFP 和 LA-LITG 连通性尤其介导了 TCA 对特质焦虑的影响。总体而言，我们的研究扩展了之前的研究，揭示了 TCA 对焦虑的保护作用背后的神经基础，并确定了特定的 RSFC 中介通路。未来的研究可以探索有针对性的 TCA 训练（行为或神经）是否有助于缓解焦虑。