Project 467259

Childhood brain cancer occurs at a critical stage of physical and cognitive development. Although treatments have improved in the past two decades, the severity of the disease and the intensity of the treatment incur long-term effects on survivors. Brain tumors can negatively affect the speed at which children process information from the world around them, which affects their social and academic abilities. Improving the quality of life after childhood brain cancer treatment is an important problem facing healthcare today. Recent advances in brain research have recognized the importance of an aperiodic part of brain activity. Aperiodic brain activity can be described as activity that does not follow regular patterns of brain waves. Using aperiodic brain activity, researchers have successfully predicted the presence of other conditions that impact brain function in children like autism and ADHD. We believe aperiodic brain activity could also be related to the lower information processing speed in survivors of childhood brain cancer. Using brain imaging, we plan to compare the aperiodic brain activity of children survivors of brain cancer and healthy children. We will also measure how fast children react to a set of tasks to compare their information processing speed. We predict that lower processing speeds in children survivors of brain cancer will be related to higher aperiodic activity compared to healthy children. Aperiodic brain activity could allow researchers to monitor the effectiveness of therapies and find out how we can minimize damage from cancer treatments. Better treatments will significantly improve the chances that survivors will be able to graduate from school, work, and lead more independent lives in the future.