Pretreatment worry and neurocognitive responses in women with breast cancer

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 33(3) of Health Psychology (see record 2014-07787-001). The name of author Misook Jung was misspelled as Mi Sook Jung. All versions of this article have been corrected.]

Altered cognitive function has been associated with breast cancer treatment, particularly adjuvant chemotherapy, but the underlying neuropsychological mechanisms are not yet understood. Recent research indicates that compromised attention and working memory can exist before adjuvant treatment, implicating psychological distress, such as worry, as a possible contributor to observed alterations in cognitive function. We hypothesized that worry associated with breast cancer diagnosis might influence neurocognitive responses before any adjuvant therapy.

Fifty women, 25 due to receive chemotherapy and 25 due to receive radiation therapy, participated in the study. Women performed a verbal working memory task during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning to assess neurocognitive responses before any adjuvant treatment and to test the relationship of such responses with self-reports of worry.

Although prechemotherapy participants showed significantly higher levels of worry compared with preradiation participants, higher worry, across both groups, was related to altered brain function. Specifically, increased worry was associated with reduced demand-related deactivation in default-mode regions, such as the precuneus/posterior cingulate. Reduced demand-related deactivation was critically related to worse behavioral performance, which was partially mediated by worry.

Worry appears to be a significant contributor to neurocognitive dysfunction independent of adjuvant treatment for breast cancer. These results suggest that alterations in cognitive function may develop before any chemotherapy treatment and that worry about cancer diagnosis may contribute to reports of "chemo brain" during treatment. Psychological interventions aimed at mitigating worry may help to alleviate cognitive dysfunction associated with life-threatening illness such as breast cancer.