Chemotherapy, a common form of cancer treatment , has been found
to cause short-term structural changes in the brain, according
to a new study. Although there have been repeated complaints
from patients claiming to suffer problems with memory and
problem-solving in the past, there has been little data to
support physical changes in the brain until now. However, a new
study by researchers from the Breast Cancer Survivors' Brain MRI
Database Group in Japan looked at high-resolution images of
patients' brains, which were obtained using MRI scans The
researchers looked at specific areas of the brain in patients
who had received chemotherapy for breast cancer and compared
those areas with patients who had not undergone chemotherapy.
Images showed that those patients who had received chemotherapy
exhibited significantly smaller regions of the brain associated
with memory, analysis and other cognitive functions within 12
months of undergoing treatment. The structural changes were
found to rectify themselves within f