Altered regional homogeneity and homotopic connectivity in Chinese breast cancer survivors with fear of cancer recurrence: A resting-state fMRI study

Abstract

BackgroundFear of cancer recurrence (FCR) is one of the most distressing concerns for breast cancer survivors, but the neural mechanism underlying FCR remains unclear. MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional study and recruited 62 breast cancer survivors varying in FCR (31 high-FCR individuals and 31 low-FCR individuals) and compared neuroimaging findings. Data from 3 low-FCR subjects were excluded because they did not complete all experiments. All the participants underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). Regional homogeneity (ReHo) and voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) were assessed. ResultsBreast cancer survivors with high and low FCR significantly differed in the ReHo of the left caudate nucleus and precuneus as well as in the VMHC of the posterior cerebellar lobe, superior frontal gyrus, orbital frontal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, occipital gyrus, inferior parietal lobule and frontal middle gyrus. FCR was negatively correlated with the mean ReHo of the left caudate nucleus (r = −0.501, p < 0.001) and positively correlated with the mean ReHo of the right precuneus (r = 0.505, p < 0.001). In addition, FCR was positively correlated with the mean VMHC of the bilateral superior occipital gyrus (r = 0.438, p < 0.001). ConclusionThese findings suggest that the left caudate nucleus, right precuneus and bilateral superior occipital gyrus are involved in FCR, which may provide preliminary evidence to improve the present understanding of the neural mechanisms of FCR.