Slashdot Mirror
Cell Phone Radiation Excites the Brain
frostilicus2 writes "The Register is reporting that Italian researchers have shown that radiation from mobile phones can excite the brain's cortex. A region that is "responsible for many higher faculties". They even claim that such an effect could be beneficial to some conditions."
No, it could be that in other conditions it has no effect whatsoever. I know you're probably just trying to make a joke, but the exception is not always the exact polar opposite to the norm.
:)
Regarding driving like a moron: If you're using a cell phone while driving, you're probably already a moron. The cell phone is coincidental, not causal.
=Smidge=
Without having read the actual scientific journal article (but just the very unscientific coverage of it), I have serious reservations about the study: 1) Cell phone radiation is of sufficiently low energy that I am not sure it can even penetrate INTO the brain. I am not sure this has ever been conclusively shown. (I am a radiation oncologist by trade. We deal with much higher energy beams when treating patients. So I'm a little outside my training here. However, even some of the treatments we use only penetrate a centimeter or less, and these are much higher energy than radiation from cell phones, as far as I know.) 2) This study appears, at first blush, to make the error of assuming that association of two disparate events demonstrates cause and effect. If the brain is more active, their study design fails to prove that it is due to the radiation. Maybe the brain becomes more excitable because the study subject just got a phone call from a friend or loved one? Furthermore, does the motor cortex excitation show a "sidedness?" That is, if subject hold the phone against her right ear, versus their left, does it make a difference in the excitation of the right versus left motor cortex? It might be that the original article addresses some of these shortcomings.
What happens when we're all using multimode 3G/WiMAX phones? Swedes in Gotene got their brains fried by their recent WiMAX deployment. I'd call that "exciting the brain": exciting like a train wreck.
--
make install -not war
Your anecdotal evidence is contradicted by studies that have shown automobile drivers talking on cellphones are as accident prone and unsafe as drunk drivers. Some countries ban cell phones and driving at the same time and make it an arrestable offense.
My two cents:
I bet if you take a survey of drivers who talk on their phones a large majority of them would say they are not causing problems. Just like you said about yourself. And most of them would be wrong.
Also, I've had plenty of friends and coworkers call me from their cars while driving. These conversations all too often start with 20 seconds of meaningful content then degenerate into a half-assed gab fest where they are happy to yak away, somewhere in between bored, lonely and distracted.