Interaction of Age and Cancer Treatment on Brain Function and Structure in Breast Cancer Survivors

Breast cancer is a common form of cancer that has an increasing occurrence among women in the last few decades. Chemotherapy is an approved form of treatment for breast cancer that has been shown to cause improvements in long term cancer survival. However, many cancer survivors reported adverse effects of chemotherapy on their cognition (eg. Hutchinson et al. 2012). The body of literature emphasizes that despite improving the survival rate, chemotherapy might have detrimental effects on survivors’ brain function that must not be overlooked. For instance, some researchers concluded that chemotherapy can potentially cause changes in brain function, attentional processing and executive functioning. In this study, we will investigate the interaction of age and cancer treatment on cognition and brain volume by examining two groups of cancer survivors who are on average 75 years old. The study will evaluate the interaction of age and chemotherapy in two groups of survivors who are either 1 or 10 years since their cancer treatment to examine short and long term effects of chemotherapy on brain structure and function. Since chemotherapy has been approved as a form of treatment, it\u27s important to understand what side effects on the brain it has and whether or not those side effects are long or short terms. Furthermore, breast cancer is the most common cancer in the world. Thus, knowing what side effects chemotherapy can cause, and how aging after chemotherapy increase or decrease side effects is therapeutically important for the scientific community and for patients themselves