who says "scrambled egg" brain as a symptom is just in your head?

[Lani]

Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2006 Sep 29; [Epub ahead of print] Links
Altered frontocortical, cerebellar, and basal ganglia activity in adjuvant-treated breast cancer survivors 5-10 years after chemotherapy.

Silverman DH,
Dy CJ,
Castellon SA,
Lai J,
Pio BS,
Abraham L,
Waddell K,
Petersen L,
Phelps ME,
Ganz PA.
Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, University of California, David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Purpose To explore the relationship of regional cerebral blood flow and metabolism with cognitive function and past exposure to chemotherapy for breast cancer. Patients and methods Subjects treated for breast cancer with adjuvant chemotherapy remotely (5-10 years previously) were studied with neuropsychologic testing and positron emission tomography (PET), and were compared with control subjects who had never received chemotherapy. [O-15] water PET scans was acquired during performance of control and memory-related tasks to evaluate cognition-related cerebral blood flow, and [F-18] fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET scans were acquired to evaluate resting cerebral metabolism. PET scans were analyzed by statistical parametric mapping and region of interest methods of analysis. Results During performance of a short-term recall task, modulation of cerebral blood flow in specific regions of frontal cortex and cerebellum was significantly altered in chemotherapy-treated subjects. Cerebral activation in chemotherapy-treated subjects differed most significantly from untreated subjects in inferior frontal gyrus, and resting metabolism in this area correlated with performance on a short-term memory task previously found to be particularly impaired in chemotherapy-treated subjects. In examining drug-class specific effects, metabolism of the basal ganglia was significantly decreased in tamoxifen + chemotherapy-treated patients compared with chemotherapy-only breast cancer subjects or with subjects who had not received chemotherapy, while chemotherapy alone was not associated with decreased basal ganglia activity relative to untreated subjects. Conclusion Specific alterations in activity of frontal cortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia in breast cancer survivors were documented by functional neuroimaging 5-10 years after completion of chemotherapy.
PMID: 17009108 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

The full article suggests following PET scans of brain activity to catch neurotoxicity early just as MUGAs are done to catch cardiotoxicity early.

[sadie]

Great.........
Now I can tell my family (we have a history of alzheimer's) that if I start showing signs of memory loss etc that it may not be alzheimer's, but instead a chemo side-effect! Either way.........will I forget that I ever had breast cancer and live happily ever after? lol
I seem to be having trouble now, remembering correct words to use when I speak. I don't know if it is Herceptin/chemo side effects or if it is because I have soooo much on my mind! So far, I think it is the latter.
I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Thank you, Lani, for keeping us informed on what we can expect when we DO SURVIVE
breast cancer.