Melara Robert D, Root James C, Edelman Jay A, Estelle Maria Camilla, Mohr Isabella, Ahles Tim A
Department of Psychology, The City College, City University of New York, 160 Convent Avenue, NAC 7-120, New York, NY 10031, USA.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science Services, 641 Lexington Avenue, 7th Floor, New York, New York 10022, USA.
Arch Clin Neuropsychol. 2025 Jan 21;40(1):52-62. doi: 10.1093/arclin/acae066.
Cognitive dysfunction has been observed consistently in a subset of breast cancer survivors. Yet the precise neurophysiological origins of cancer-related cognitive decline remain unknown. The current study assessed neural noise (1/f activity in electroencephalogram [EEG]) in breast cancer survivors as a potential contributor to observed cognitive dysfunction from pre- to post-treatment.
We measured EEG in a longitudinal design during performance of the paired-click task and the revised Attention Network Test (ANT-R) to investigate pre- versus post-treatment effects of neural noise in breast cancer patients (n = 20 in paired click; n = 19 in ANT-R) compared with healthy controls (n = 32 in paired click; n = 29 in ANT-R).
In both paradigms, one sensory (paired click) and one cognitive (ANT-R), we found that neural noise was significantly elevated after treatment in patients, remaining constant from pretest to posttest in controls. In the ANT-R, patients responded more slowly than controls on invalid cuing trials. Increased neural noise was associated with poorer alerting and poorer inhibitory control of attention (as measured by behavioral network scores), particularly for patients after treatment.
The current study is the first to show a deleterious effect of breast cancer and/or cancer treatment on neural noise, pointing to alterations in the relative balance of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs, while also suggesting promising approaches for cognitive rehabilitation.
在一部分乳腺癌幸存者中一直观察到认知功能障碍。然而，与癌症相关的认知衰退的确切神经生理学起源仍然未知。本研究评估了乳腺癌幸存者的神经噪声（脑电图[EEG]中的1/f活动），作为治疗前后观察到的认知功能障碍的一个潜在因素。
我们采用纵向设计，在执行配对点击任务和修订版注意力网络测试（ANT-R）期间测量脑电图，以研究乳腺癌患者（配对点击组n = 20；ANT-R组n = 19）与健康对照者（配对点击组n = 32；ANT-R组n = 29）治疗前后神经噪声的影响。
在两种范式中，一种是感觉范式（配对点击），一种是认知范式（ANT-R），我们发现患者在治疗后神经噪声显著升高，而对照组从预测试到后测试保持不变。在ANT-R中，患者在无效提示试验中的反应比对照组更慢。神经噪声增加与警觉性较差和注意力抑制控制较差（通过行为网络得分衡量）有关，尤其是治疗后的患者。
本研究首次表明乳腺癌和/或癌症治疗对神经噪声有有害影响，表明兴奋性和抑制性突触输入的相对平衡发生了改变，同时也为认知康复提出了有前景的方法。
