Using cell phones affects brain activity

With the public debate over the health effects of cell phones raging on, scientists and doctors are always on the search for evidence of possible health hazards of talking on the phone.

Now new research suggests that the radiation emitted by cell phones can actually affect brain activity — even on relatively short-time scales.

The current study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by researchers Nora Volkow, Dardo Tomasi, and Gene-Jack Wang, et al. has found that cell phones that are turned on and held near the head increase the levels of glucose metabolism in the brain.

Volkow’s team recruited 47 different individuals to participate in the study. All the participants were healthy and consented to having their brains imaged via positron emission topology.

Two cell phones were placed on either side of the participants’ heads. Two tests were conducted: one with the cell phone on the right side of the head that was on, but muted (to avoid brain activity due to listening or processing language), and one with both cell phones off.

Testing and imaging took 50 minutes per trial and when the results were examined, there was a clear trend suggesting that active cell phones, even when merely on, can increase brain glucose metabolism.

The increased rates of glucose metabolism were greatest in the regions of the brain closest to the active cell phone — the right orbitofrontal and temporal cortical regions, specifically.

Scientists have hypothesized that these increases may actually reflect physiological changes being made to the cells in the affected brain regions.

For example, perhaps the radiofrequency modulated electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs) change the properties of cell membranes themselves i.e. ion permeability, neurotransmitter release, etc. However, no conclusive evidence exists as of yet to prove the exact mechanism of how the brain is affected by cell phone usage.

While not conclusively proving that cell phones cause cancer or anything of that nature, the team’s results do suggest that cell phone usage can have dramatic effects on the body — and the brain in particular.

It remains to be seen what the long-term significance of the increased glucose metabolism measured by Volkow’s team is, as well as if cell phones can similarly affect other body parts.

These findings more importantly suggest that more research needs to be done to investigate the precise effects of long-term cell phone use on the brain.