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Mindfulness-based stress reduction alters brain activity for breast cancer survivors with chronic neuropathic pain: preliminary evidence from resting-state fMRI

Journal of Cancer Survivorship volume 15, pages 518–525 (2021)Cite this article

Abstract

Purpose

Breast cancer continues to be the most commonly diagnosed cancer among Canadian women, with as many as 25–60% of women suffering from chronic neuropathic pain (CNP) as a pervasive consequence of treatment. While pharmacological interventions have shown limited efficacy for the management of CNP to date, psychological interventions, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), may be a promising alterative for improving pain-related problems. The purpose of this study was to use brain imaging methods to investigate this potential.

Methods

Resting-state fMRI was used in female breast cancer survivors with CNP before and after an 8-week MBSR course (n = 13) and compared with a waitlist control group (n = 10).

Results

Focusing on the default mode network, the most significant results show greater posterior cingulate connectivity with medial prefrontal regions post-MBSR intervention. Moreover, this change in connectivity correlated with reduced pain severity for the MBSR group.

Conclusions

These results provide empirical evidence of a change in the brain following MBSR intervention associated with changes in the subjective experience of pain.

Implications for Cancer Survivors

This study gives hope for a non-invasive method of easing the struggle of CNP in women following breast cancer treatment.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the MRI technologists from the Ottawa Hospital for their assistance with data collection. We also thank the participants, MBSR group leaders, and the research staff involved in the primary study.

Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, 136 Jean-Jacques Lussier Room 2079, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5, Canada

    A. M. Smith, A. Leeming, Z. Fang & O. Mioduszewski

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

    T. Hatchard, M. A. Schneider & A. Ferdossifard

  3. The Ottawa Health Research Institute, Ottawa, Canada

    Y. Shergill & E-L. Khoo

  4. Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada

    P. Poulin

Authors
  1. A. M. Smith
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  2. A. Leeming
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  3. Z. Fang
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  4. T. Hatchard
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  5. O. Mioduszewski
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  6. M. A. Schneider
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  7. A. Ferdossifard
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  8. Y. Shergill
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  9. E-L. Khoo
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Contributions

AS: conceptualization, supervision, resources, investigation, funding acquisition, writing, data curation, formal analysis, methodology, visualization, design. AL: writing—original draft. ZF: formal analysis, resources, visualization, writing—review and editing. TH: investigation, writing—review and editing. OM: investigation. MS: writing—review and editing. AF: writing—review and editing. PP: conceptualization, funding acquisition, writing—review and editing, supervision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. M. Smith.

Ethics declarations

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committees and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Smith, A.M., Leeming, A., Fang, Z. et al. Mindfulness-based stress reduction alters brain activity for breast cancer survivors with chronic neuropathic pain: preliminary evidence from resting-state fMRI. J Cancer Surviv 15, 518–525 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11764-020-00945-0

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