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Abstract
Chemotherapy is thought to cause cognitive deficits in some breast cancer patients, but the relative effects on older and younger breast cancer patients are unknown. The effects of chemotherapy on everyday cognitive tasks have not been examined. Thirty-eight female breast cancer survivors (3 to 45 months post chemotherapy) were compared to 55 age-matched control participants. Participants completed the Useful Field of View (UFOV), a computerized test of visual information processing that has been shown to decline with age, and which has been used to predict older adults' driving performance. Older chemotherapy patients performed more poorly than controls on the UFOV speed of processing, but not on the other two components. They also performed more poorly than younger chemotherapy patients. On the divided attention and selective attention components of the UFOV, older participants performed more poorly than younger participants, but there were no significant differences between chemotherapy patients and controls. These findings are explained in terms of brain changes thought to be caused by chemotherapy, which might have the most impact on older adults, already at risk for behavioral slowing.
This research was made possible by grant number NIH1R03AG22635-01 from the National Institutes of Health. The contents of this document are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. An earlier version of this paper was originally presented at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, November, 2005.
Notes
Note. ∗p < .05.