Belgian researchers say, that some women with breast cancer may experience changes in brain activity while multitasking after chemotherapy, the Newsmax Health reported.

To compare women with themselves before and after chemo, as well as with other women, Sabine Deprez, who led the new study and her colleagues at the University Hospital Gasthuisberg of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).

Eighteen women with breast cancer scheduled to receive chemotherapy performed a multitasking exercise in an MRI machine before starting treatment and four to six months after treatment ended.

Two comparison groups - one of women with breast cancer not scheduled to receive chemotherapy and another of healthy women - also performed the tasks.

Neither of the two comparison groups seemed to change in terms of the parts of the brain activated by the tasks or their level of activation, while in the chemotherapy group brain activation significantly decreased, the authors report. Meanwhile, patients in the chemotherapy group also complained of “foggy thinking” more than those in the other groups.

That could be because chemotherapy causes structural changes in the brain, but experts still don’t know.