"Chemo Brain"

Problem statement: A significant portion of childhood and adult cancer survivors go on to experience cognitive, academic, and social difficulties. Collectively, these problems limit the quality of survival for years to come. As such, investigators have recently focused on development of interventions targeted at improving neuro-cognitive deficits in survivors, particularly problems with attention and working memory.

Nationally, Cogmed, (www.cogmed.com) a computerized cognitive training program, is a new approach that has shown robust promise in increasing cognitive deficits children and adults who have completed chemotherapy and who have the “Chemo Brain” symptoms of memory loss, reading comprehension problems and/or attentional inability.

Case Study - Child:

Eric E., age 7.9, began Cogmed at home in January of 2011. He completed 27 days of training and achieved an increase of 31 points across the 13 activities in the Cogmed program.

• Post-testing revealed significant changes in his visual perceptual abilities, going from below average with a standard score of 83 overall to a standard score of 117, a score in the above average range. The visual subtests that improved the most were: Visual Discrimination, Visual Sequential Memory, Visual Figure-Ground and Visual Closure.

• He also showed significant improvement on the BRIEF: a behavioral rating scale, where his mother initially reported problems in the areas of monitoring his own behavior, inhibiting his actions and emotional control, planning and organizing his environment. When the survey was completed again, the problems had all resolved.
• Eric started out with good academic skills, with scores in the average range. On post-testing he demonstrated an increase in reading nonsense words, reading real words , math computation and on reading comprehension. On that last area, he jumped from the average range, with a standard score of 103 to a high average score of 115. 
• Eric also started out with good memory skills on the TOMAL , The test of Memory and Learning. He initially scored out 2 standard deviations above the mean but on post-testing, this jumped to 3 standard deviations above the mean.

Eric's mom writes:

"Karla -

I have been so impressed with how well Eric has done after participating in the CogMed program. After his chemo, he was showing significant signs of ADHD or behavior problems: very fidgety, not waiting his turn, bothering others during class, easily upset, easily distracted, volatile. I wasn't sure if we were just seeing post-chemo effects or if there was really something brewing underneath. He had not had any behavior concerns prior to his cancer.

The initial testing with you was easy and Eric enjoyed it. He loved being the center of attention and the questions and tests you did with him were comfortable and fun. I'm sure he had no clue he was being tested.

Once we started the CogMed program, getting him to "play" was no trick at all. The incentive chart that you provided made tracking his daily progress a breeze. He enjoyed working towards prizes while playing his games each day. I was impressed at how quickly he was able to progress through the levels. I still cannot believe he was able to go from recalling groups of 3-4 numbers front and backwards to easily getting 7-8 characters both ways! I can't even do that!

His progress in school improved, too. We weren't having the emotional outbursts, he wasn't as distractible and his homework even improved. It seemed like he could get through more work before wanting to move on. Although it wasn't our primary goal, his grades improved as well.

I have been extremely pleased with the CogMed program and U Can Learn. I would heartily recommend it any parent - post-chemo or not - for their child that is struggling at home and at school. It was worth every effort! I am pleased that something so "fun" and simple could produce these types of results in such a short period of time, without pharmaceutical intervention.

Thank you, thank you!"

Julianne E.

Case Study - Adult (coming soon)