Effects of a Neuroscience-based Technique on Cancer Patients Announced of a Palliative Disease Progression and Partners

Plain-language summary

The diagnosis and treatment trajectory of cancer can constitute a traumatic event because these can be perceived as sudden, catastrophic and life threatening. One common mental disorder following traumatic events is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), described as reexperiencing of the event (e.g., having intrusive thoughts), having avoidance of trauma memories, emotional numbing, and experiencing hyperarousal symptoms. To date, and to the best of the investigator's knowledge, few studies have focused on PTSD in advanced cancer, but the existing data show that these patients are at risk for experiencing PTSD symptoms. Among the early interventions for preventing PTSD in people confronted by traumatic events is group debriefing, the retelling of the event, receiving empathy and compassion, and being encouraged to express feelings. However, four meta-analyses found debriefing to be ineffective. A neuroscience-based and evidence-based alternative may be the Memory Structuring Intervention (MSI) that tries to shift trauma processing from a limbic, emotional and somatic level to a frontal-cortical, cognitive and verbal level of processing. The MSI tries to achieve this shift by teaching people confronted with traumatic events to chronologically organize the segments of the event, to verbally label feelings or somatic sensations rather than re-experience them, and to provide causal links between the event's segments and causality to their feelings and sensations Since in males, sympathetic responses were more predictive of PTSD than in females , parasympathetic activation may be needed to be added to the MSI, for men. A main branch of the parasympathetic response is the vagus nerve, whose non-invasive index is Heart Rate Variability (HRV). One way to increase HRV, and thus parasympathetic activation, is through vagal breathing (i.e., deep, paced breathing). Therefore, adding to the MSI deep vagal breathing (VB) to reduce sympathetic hyperactivity, may increase connectivity between the amygdala and the frontal cortex. This may also increase the emotional regulation possibly yielded by the MSI, however in both genders. The effects of the MSI + vagal breathing on PTSD symptoms and on prognosis in advanced cancer patients receiving announcement of terminal cancer have never been investigated. Furthermore, whether reduced inflammation and increased emotional regulation may account for such effects needs to be investigated at the fundamental level. This project reflects the merging of neuroscience, psychooncology and psychoneuroimmunology for better understanding and treating cancer patients, as well as their partners.

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