Attention in adult intracranial tumors patients

Abstract

This study investigated the neuropsychological effects of intracranial tumors on attention, prior to irradiation and chemotherapy. Subjects (n = 55) being treated for low-grade, supratentorial brain tumors were administered tests of attention and working memory. We divided the tumor patients into a "superficial" regional group (e.g., gliomas that infiltrate white matter and meningiomas attached to the cortical surface) and classified them into four brain regions: anterior left side, anterior right side, posterior left side, posterior right side. The groups were also classified into either a combined anterior group or combined posterior group, and either a combined left hemispheric group or combined right hemispheric group. All groups were compared to deep tumor (DT) patients (e.g., pituitary and pineal tumors) and a demographically normal control (NC) group (n = 63). While the NC group primarily outperformed the brain tumor groups on the neuropsychological measures, there were instances where the individual brain tumor groups demonstrated higher scores than the NC group. Significant differences among the brain tumor groups were only found on Digits Forward. The DT group performed significantly worse than the superficial regional groups and the combined anterior and combined posterior groups on Digits Forward. The DT group was also worse than the combined left hemispheric and right hemispheric groups on Digits Forward. The fact that the DT group performed similarly to the other patient groups on the remaining attention measures suggests that these tumors are associated with especially poor attentional performance.