Memory Perception Assessment in Central/Non-central Nervous System Cancers

Overview

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to implement intended actions in the future. It allows maintaining and retrieving future plans, goals, and activities (i.e., remember to remember). PM is associated with most everyday memory problems . PM is crucial to correctly respond to all the social, occupational and working demands of everyday life, to perform many deferred health-related actions and is involved in therapeutic adherence . Indeed, PM errors are an important part of the aging memory complaints. The prevalence of self-reported PM failures is also significant among young adults, compared with self-reported retrospective memory (RM) failures .Yet, PM errors are major sources of frustration and embarrassment . In oncology, recently investigated the self-reported memory complaints in a 80 case-healthy-control study breast patients . Subjective memory complaints were assessed using the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire . Results from the Paquet et al. study show that all participants (i.e., both patients and matched-controls) reported more PM than RM failures in daily-life (p\<.001). Breast cancer patients reported more RM and PM failures than controls. However, this group effect was no longer statistically significant when controlling for depression and fatigue. These findings are consistent with the view that memory complaints are closely associated with depression and cancer-related fatigue, and more generally with psychopathological variables .As underlined by Paquet et al. subjective memory complaints should be investigated because they refer to some aspects of the cancer experience that could potentially be linked to quality of life. Thus, it is important to explore psychopathological basis such as depression, anxiety and fatigue while investigating self-reported memory failures in cancer patients. Despites the importance of PM, there have been, to our knowledge, only few studies evaluating PM complaints or PM functioning in patients diagnosed with an intracerebral tumor (such as Diffuse Low-Grade Glioma- DLGG- or glioblastome- GB) or extra-cerebral tumor (such as breast cancer - BC). Therefore, the investigators thought it would be useful, as a first step, to conduct a study to explore and to manage the PM and RM subjective complaints in cancer patients compared to another chronic disease, such as HIV. In fine, these data will help to identify a new target for psychological management focused on either psychopathological or neuropsychological rehabilitation

Primary objective : This study will aim at determining the nature of subjective memory complaints (i.e., prospective or retrospective memory) in cancer patients with intra- cerebral tumors (Glioblastomas and Diffuse Low Grade Gliomas) and extra cerebral tumors (Breast cancer) compared with controls. The protocol administration will take about 20 minutes. It will be conducted by an experienced clinical neuropsychologist or clinical oncologist in each center during standard care. According to the results on the questionnaires and test, patients will be addressed and managed by a neuropsychologist, a clinical psychologist, psychiatrist or a speech therapist.