ABSTRACT
Little is known about white matter microstructure and its role in information processing abilities of children treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) early posttreatment. Twenty-one survivors of ALL and 18 controls (7–16 years) underwent neurocognitive assessment. A subsample underwent diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. The ALL group performed poorer on measures of processing capacity, and had widespread areas of decreased fractional anisotropy and increased radial diffusivity. Significant group by white matter microstructure interactions was found when predicting processing speed. Findings provide evidence for an atypical brain–behavior relationship early posttreatment for childhood ALL. Replication in a larger sample is required.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the participants and their families for generously giving up their time to participate in this study. We would also like to thank Dr Chris Adamson and Dr Jian Chen for their assistance with processing the imaging data and the ALLaboard research team for the assistance with recruitment and data collection.
Declaration of interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare
Supplementary data
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