School of Psychology, University of Ottawa Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2011 Nov 1;5:122. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2011.00122. eCollection 2011.
Cognitive deficits are a side-effect of chemotherapy, however pre-treatment research is limited. This study examines neurofunctional differences during working memory between breast cancer (BC) patients and controls, prior to chemotherapy.
Early stage BC females (23), scanned after surgery but before chemotherapy, were individually matched to non-cancer controls. Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing a Visuospatial N-back task and data was analyzed by multiple group comparisons. fMRI task performance, neuropsychological tests, hospital records, and salivary biomarkers were also collected.
There were no significant group differences on neuropsychological tests, estrogen, or cortisol. Patients made significantly fewer commission errors but had less overall correct responses and were slower than controls during the task. Significant group differences were observed for the fMRI data, yet results depended on the type of analysis. BC patients presented with increased activations during working memory compared to controls in areas such as the inferior frontal gyrus, insula, thalamus, and midbrain. Individual group regressions revealed a reverse relationship between brain activity and commission errors.
This is the first fMRI investigation to reveal neurophysiological differences during visuospatial working memory between BC patients pre-chemotherapy and controls. These results also increase the knowledge about the effects of BC and related factors on the working memory network.
This highlights the need to better understand the pre-chemotherapy BC patient and the effects of associated confounding variables.
认知缺陷是化疗的副作用，但在化疗前的研究有限。本研究在化疗前检查了乳腺癌（BC）患者和对照组在工作记忆期间的神经功能差异。
对 23 名早期 BC 女性患者（手术后但在化疗前）进行了单独匹配的非癌症对照组。参与者在执行视觉空间 N 回任务时接受了功能磁共振成像（fMRI），并通过多组比较进行了数据分析。还收集了 fMRI 任务表现、神经心理学测试、医院记录和唾液生物标志物。
神经心理学测试、雌激素或皮质醇方面，两组无显著差异。与对照组相比，患者在任务中犯的错误明显较少，但整体正确反应较少，且反应速度较慢。fMRI 数据存在显著的组间差异，但结果取决于分析类型。与对照组相比，BC 患者在执行工作记忆任务时，下额叶、脑岛、丘脑和中脑等区域的大脑活动增加。个体组回归显示，大脑活动与错误之间呈反向关系。
这是首次在化疗前的 BC 患者和对照组之间的视觉空间工作记忆期间的 fMRI 研究中揭示神经生理差异。这些结果还增加了关于 BC 及其相关因素对工作记忆网络的影响的知识。
这凸显了需要更好地了解化疗前的 BC 患者以及相关混杂变量的影响。
