NewScientist-Mobile phones boost brain activity
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Mobile phones boost brain activity
23 February 2011
Magazine issue 2801.
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WHAT is your cellphone doing to your brain? The latest study shows that long calls boost brain activity, though whether this is harmful is not known.
Nora Volkow, director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues attached cellphones to each ear of 47 volunteers. They used a PET scanner to compare brain activity when both phones were switched off and when one phone was receiving a 50-minute call while the other remained off. The volunteers weren’t able to tell which, if either, of the phones was switched on, due to muting.
The group found a 7 per cent increase in activity in regions of the brain near the phone’s antenna when the phone was receiving a call (Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 305, p 808).
Volkow says it is too early to tell whether this is good or bad for the brain. “Much larger fluctuations in brain activity occur naturally,” says Patrick Haggard at University College London. In fact, being able to increase activity might boost the brain’s connectivity, and could even be useful therapeutically, Volkow suggests.
