CONCLUSIONS
cancer, anxiety, breast cancer
CANCER, BREAST CANCER
Employing an fMRI experiment, we found that BC patients experienced greater negative emotion in response to BC‐related stimuli than their healthy counterparts. More importantly, those who chose BMX had less activation in prefrontal regions while regulating BC‐related negative emotion than did those who chose more conservative non‐BMX treatments. These findings offer neuropsychological evidence that difficulty in managing anxiety related to cancer is a crucial factor in surgical treatment decision‐making. Difficulty in emotion regulation may serve as an intervention target with the goal of improving breast cancer treatment decision‐making by enhancing the ability to regulate cancer‐related anxiety.