In this study, we hypothesize that radiation therapy induce longitudinal neurocognitive dysfunction in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma. To verify this hypothesis, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to detect the local spontaneous brain activity in 38 patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma 20 healthy controls at the baseline and follow-up examinations. The changes in brain activity at the early delayed stage after radiation therapy are then used to predict the brain functional impairment at a later stage. The results showed that radiation therapy may induce significant changes in reginal homogeneity in the brain, and such changes at early delayed stage may serve as a potential biomarker for predicting neurocognitive dysfunction at a later stage.
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