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Heavy Cell Phone Use May Alter Brain Functions

Neural function may be affected by use of mobile telephones, with duration of exposure being key.

These are among findings of a multicentre study by researchers in Australia and England led by Dr Rodney J. Croft from Australia's University of Wollongong, Wollongong, and Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn.

Widespread use of mobile telephones (MP) in the face of inconsistent information on their physiological impact prompted this test of whether exposure to an active MP affects the electroencephalogram (EEG) as a function of time.

Different study methodologies around such issues as duration of exposure may help to explain conflicting reports in the literature to date on these devices, suggest these authors.

Twenty-four people participated in this single-blind, fully counterbalanced cross-over study.

Both resting EEG and phase-locked neural responses to auditory stimuli were measured while a MP was either in active operation or turned off.

The researchers found MP exposure altered resting EEG, decreasing 1-4Hz activity (right hemisphere sites) and increasing 8-12Hz activity as a function of exposure duration (midline posterior sites).

Exposure also altered early phase-locked neural responses, attenuating the normal response decrement over time in the 4-8Hz band, decreasing the response in the 1230Hz band globally and as a function of time and increasing midline frontal and lateral posterior responses in the 30-45Hz band.

Thus, active MPs affect people's neural function and do so as a function of exposure duration. However, the temporal nature of this effect may contribute to the lack of consistent results reported in the literature, conclude these authors.
Clinical Neurophysiology, Vol. 113 (10) (2002) pp. 1623-1632. "Acute mobile phone operation affects neural function in humans"

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