Introduction
cancer
FEMALE BREAST CANCER, CANCER, BRAIN DISORDERS
The number of people currently living with cancer in Western Europe has almost doubled in recent decades, in part due to a decline in cancer mortality.An RCT pilot study of 20 female breast cancer patients showed that women who received a 4-week alpha NF intervention had both improved short-term memory and increased QoL.Neurophysiological target parameters such as arousal, emotional valence, and sleep are associated with certain spectral frequency bands in the EEG. An increase in arousal has been associated with an increase in central frontal beta band,Other than these promising results, our working group showed that research focusing on NF in cancer patients is lacking, and unfortunately, many publications about the efficacy/effectiveness of NF in mental and brain disorders show severe methodological weaknesses, enhancing the need to close this research gap.Therefore, the present study aims to compare the effects of an alpha/theta NF training protocol with a mindfulness therapy, which is already highly used in the treatment of cancer patients.Based on these findings, we expect an effect of NF and mindfulness on specific clinical symptoms in a sample of cancer patients by changing alpha and theta-beta activity. If the effectiveness of NF is comparable to mindfulness, it might be implemented in the clinical context as an additional psycho-oncological intervention for in- and outpatient cancer patients.