Abstract POSTER-CTRL-1205: Neurocognitive evaluation of a cognitive training intervention in ovarian and gynecologic cancer survivors
Authors: Gray H. , Thomas M. K. Askren , Anderson K. , David D. , Singh A. , Murphy K. , Willis S. , Mendoza H. , Cherrier M.M. 
Published: August 2015

Purpose: Our prior work indicates that a group-based cognitive training intervention can improve memory and attention in cancer survivors. This study examined potential for training transfer on two cognitive tasks and corresponding changes in neural activation patterns as measured by fMRI prior to and following the cognitive training intervention.

Methods: Seven gynecologic cancer (ovarian, breast, uterine) survivors (mean age: 64 years, mean time since primary treatment: 7.2 years) underwent a 7-week cognitive rehabilitation intervention delivered in group format. Participants were evaluated with a comprehensive cognitive battery and two experimental cognitive tasks prior to and following treatment. A word pair task required participants to learn pairs of words and later indicate whether words had been seen before (Item condition) or whether words had been paired together at learning (Relational condition). A verbal working memory task required participants to learn a set of 3, 5, or 7 letters and confirm or deny the presence of a probe letter. Participants also underwent fMRI scanning during word pair and verbal working memory tasks prior to and following treatment.

Results: Participants showed significant improvement following intervention in accuracy in the Relational condition, in which strong associations between presented word pairs were required for successful performance, t(3)=5.21, p&lt; .05. By contrast, accuracy did not increase significantly in the Item condition following intervention, t(3)=.48, p=.66). There was also a significant improvement in accuracy for the intermediate load (5-item) condition of the verbal working memory task following intervention, t(3)=4.17, p&lt;.05. fMRI analyses revealed activation in a frontoparietal network during both the word pairs and verbal working memory tasks. Future analyses will investigate changes in recruitment of this network following intervention.

Conclusions: Cancer survivors show evidence of specific transfer of memory skills following a group-based cognitive training intervention as demonstrated by improvement on the word memory task- relational item. In addition, there was a trend toward improvement on a working memory task. Neuroimaging results suggest frontoparietal network involvement for the cognitive task as well as some indication of a more efficient neural response following training. These results suggest that cognitive training may have a beneficial impact on both behavioral measures of cognition as well as neural activation markers.

Citation Format: H. Gray, M. K. Askren Thomas, K. Anderson, D. David, A. Singh, K. Murphy, S. Willis, H. Mendoza, M.M. Cherrier. Neurocognitive evaluation of a cognitive training intervention in ovarian and gynecologic cancer survivors [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 10th Biennial Ovarian Cancer Research Symposium; Sep 8-9, 2014; Seattle, WA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2015;21(16 Suppl):Abstract nr POSTER-CTRL-1205.