Abstract
As more chemotherapy-treated cancer patients are reaching survivorship, side-effects such as cognitive impairment warrant research attention. The advent of neuroimaging has helped uncover a neural basis for these deficits. This paper offers a review of neuroimaging investigations in chemotherapy-treated adult cancer patients, discussing the benefits and limitations of each technique and study design. Additionally, despite the assumption given by the chemobrain label that chemotherapy is the only causative agent of these deficits, other factors will be considered. Suggestions are made on how to more comprehensively study these cognitive changes using imaging techniques, thereby promoting generalizability of the results to clinical applications. Continued investigations may yield better long-term quality of life outcomes by supporting patients' self-reports, and revealing brain regions being affected by chemotherapy.
Highlights
Recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment of cancers are allowing more patients to achieve complete physical recovery
The least invasive and best quality images are produced with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
Voxel-based morphometry techniques are a widely used automated technique that divides the brain into grey matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and can provide tissue density and/or volumes for whole brain or region of interest investigations
Summary
Recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment of cancers are allowing more patients to achieve complete physical recovery. (6) effects of anesthesia on cognition for patients who underwent surgery [27], (7) stress of cancer diagnosis and treatment, (8) existence of pre-treatment differences in cognition between BC patients and controls [28,29,30,31], (9) possible negative effects of endocrine treatment on cognition [23], and (10) data analysis methods used, in particular, whether impairment is defined at the group or individual level and, in the case of longitudinal studies, whether or not the analyses control for practice effects associated with repeated testing. Both structural and functional imaging studies will be described and synthesized in separate summary tables, possible confounding variables to be considered in future studies will be discussed, as well as the need for better control groups and the challenge of translating current data to clinical practice
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