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."

Comments

Great!

[Ohreally_factor]

This should be a boon for the phone sex industry.

Ummm

[suso]

They even claim that such an effect could be beneficial to some conditions.

Counterpoint, so does that mean that in other conditions it is harmful. Like causing you to drive like a moron.

Re:Ummm

[thebdj]

Counterpoint, so does that mean that in other conditions it is harmful. Like causing you to drive like a moron.

You know, studies have actually been mixed in regards to this. Mythbusters even attempted to replicate a study that was performed; however, I was a bit skeptical of their approach since it relied on asking questions during the cell phone section that would require some degree of actual thinking and/or decision making. Most conversations I have had on a cell phone, even those not done while driving, have hardly required much thought. The calls I typically make are fairly normal conversation with either my mother or one of my friends.

I believe that my driving is no worse with the cell phone since I drive one handed anyway, and I believe that for most phone conversations the drivers are no worse then those who are smoking, playing with the radio, or eating while they drive. In fact, I would not be surprised to find people are as poor at driving with a hands-free set for their phone as they are holding the phone. In reality, I think the worse distractions do not come from the phone, but from people who may be in the car. I cannot count the number of times I see the person driving take their eyes of the road in front of them to look at the wife, girlfriend, son/daughter, or other individual riding in the car with them. Maybe it is just me, but this is far more dangerous then having a conversation and keeping your eyes on the road.

Re:Ummm

[Smidge204]

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=

Re:Ummm

[Guppy06]

"Like causing you to drive like a moron."

Because nobody drove like a moron before the invention of the cell phone?

Re:Ummm

[MyLongNickName]

Most conversations I have had on a cell phone, even those not done while driving, have hardly required much thought.

Maybe not. But there is that rare occasion where you suddenly need 100% brain power to make a quick decision. If you are engrossed in a phone conversation, it ain't there. Sorry. I should not be subject to your lack of attention on the road.

And how do you drive with a cell in your hand? Turn signals are NOT optional despite popular opinion. When you are actually driving, do you take you "free hand" off the wheel to use it? Or do you just changes lanes, and leave it to everyone else to just deal with it?

Re:Ummm

[dushkin]

What's that got to do with radiation? It's to do with gender! ;)

Re:Ummm

[mrogers]

My guess is that it's the brain, not the hands, that makes you more likely to have an accident while talking on the phone. When I'm on the phone, especially during a long call, I tend to notice a change in my spatial awareness: I become less aware of the space around me, and more aware of the space around the person I'm talking to, particularly if they're in a place with a lot of background noise or a place I can easily visualise.

Good spatial awareness is essential for safe driving, and as you pointed out a lot of people drive with one hand anyway, so I wouldn't be surprised if the accident rate was equally high for people using hands-free phones. You could test this theory in a driving simulator by asking one group of subjects to perform a spatial awareness task (eg matching rotated shapes) and a second group to perform a verbal task (eg listening comprehension).

Re:Ummm

[wbean]

I live in the city and spend a lot of time walking around. I have reached the point where if I see a driver on a cell phone I assume that they will not see me and I stay well out of their way. They are in a little world of their own with very little awareness of what's around them.

The NY Times had an interesting article on this recently (Times Select subscription required). Researchers put video cameras in cars and collected information about what was going on in the car in the seconds before an accident. The result was that "driver inattention was the overwhelming cause of the crashes in the study."

My own opinion is that conversations inside the car are less distracting than cell phone conversations because the second party to the converstation is aware of the situation outside the car and knows when to shut up or to wait for an answer. The person on the other end of the cell phone conversation doesn't have this extra input and so the conversation doesn't have the natural breaks for heavy traffic that an in-car converstation would have.

Re:Ummm

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Ummm

[drinkypoo]

How about we be realistic and accept the fact that if you are driving you aren't going to be looking at the body language of your passenger

If we are realistic, we can't accept that, because we know it's not true. We've been watching people talking to their passengers, even in the back seat, and turning around to listen to them. We've seen women turn around to smack their kid while driving in rush hour traffic. We've seen a wide range of human stupidity, and lack your faith in humanity, because we are not morons.

Lots of people WILL do that. Some people can handle talking on the cellphone while driving - if something happens they will drop the phone and if it ends up flying out the window or getting lost with the cheetos under the seat, so be it. Some people can't. If you would advocate banning one thing, then you should advocate banning all these things, and only allowing passengers on public transportation. All other travel should be done using single-person vehicles.

I don't happen to believe that, but here's another thought; I have [had - crashed it, while I was doing nothing but driving, BTW] an S-class mercedes. It comes with no cupholders, ostensibly because they want you to think about driving, and not drinking something. However, in the really real world, people who are parched are distracted, and not having a cupholder means I have to do extra work to support my beverage. Meanwhile, they gave me an ashtray and cigarette lighter, because smoking is apparently a god-given right. How is smoking not distracting?

Basically, people will do distracting things while driving, and yes, talking to a passenger is one of those things.

Re:Ummm

[elvum]

FWIW, it is illegal to use a phone while driving in the UK, unless you use a hands-free system. It's also illegal to do anything else that interferes with your control of the vehicle, including eating. Listening to music is considered to increase alertness more than it distracts. Scrabbling in the passenger footwell for tapes would probably be a no-no though...

Where's the control group?

[quokkapox]

Talking on the cell phone will activate your cortex. Ok. So where's the control group that talked on a wired phone instead and showed a lower level of cortical activity?

Re:Where's the control group?

[R.Mo_Robert]

From the article:

Fifteen male volunteers attended two experimental sessions, one week apart, in a cross-over, double-blind paradigm. In one session the signal was turned ON (EMF-on, real exposure), in the other it was turned OFF (EMF-off, sham exposure), for 45 minutes.

Re:Where's the control group?

[R.Mo_Robert]

Whoops, I lied. That's not from the article Slashdot linked to, it's from the actual study, the link to which I found on a similar BetaNews story. Do yourself a favor--skip the writeup in The Register and read the abstract yourself: Wiley InterScience Journal - Abstract.

Sounds like a report designed to secure more $

[DavidBorgioli]

It is an interesting article but way too short to tell us anything. With just 15 subjects the sample group is likely way too small to draw any conclusions. It may be enough however to secure more research money.

doesn't seem scientifically valid

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:doesn't seem scientifically valid

[r00t]

Dude, you're trying to kill a cancer in a reasonable amount of time.

The cell phone is chronic exposure. It damn well better not come even remotely close to the level needed for killing a large chunk of tissue deep inside the head.

Re:doesn't seem scientifically valid

[RocketRainbow]

No, microwaves can penetrate the brain with very little trouble at all. It's basically transparent to them, but every now and then a microwave will be absorbed by a molecule and heat it a little.

And then your brain cools itself back down the same way it would if it were a hot day outside.

Obviously it's theoretically possible that a lot of microwave photons could cause a lot of damage by heating the brain to the point where chemical change occurs. Your brain can cool itself quite comfortably if the hotspots don't heat up at a rate any more than 1K per hour - I've never actually heard of anyone checking that this is so, but I would expect that this was part of the initial safety testing when cell phones were first introduced.

(Note that microwaves haven't enough energy to ionise the brain like your gamma or X rays do - they work by heating molecules rather than by ripping the electrons off an atom to change the chemical structure.)

Re:doesn't seem scientifically valid

[stonecypher]

Without having read the actual scientific journal article (but just the very unscientific coverage of it), I have serious reservations about the study

That tells us everything we need to know. You're worried about something you neither have read nor understood, but you feel empowered to tell other people how bad it is despite your ignorance.

Don't you have the good sense to be ashamed of behaving this way?

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.

Oh nonsense. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with particle physics knows perfectly well that if it can penetrate several dozen steel or wood walls, it can make it through half an inch of bone. If you don't believe me, find your nearest cell tower, stand between it and your phone, and see whether you get a signal. That said, that cellular radiation can penetrate into the brain has been extensively shown in other animals, so unless you want to pretend the human brain is somehow different, then the reason you aren't sure is because you've never checked. A display of ignorance is not an argument against.

The issue isn't whether it can penetrate. The issue is whether it will collide on the way through.

I am a radiation oncologist by trade.

I'm not sure I believe that someone who doesn't think cell radiation can get into a brain could possibly be a trained particle physician.

So I'm a little outside my training here.

Real radiation oncologists are required to understand particle physics and its interaction with organic tissue. Those physical systems are as valid at cellphone energies as they are at x-ray and gamma energies. You shouldn't be outside your training if you are who you claim to be.

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.

A real radiation oncologist would know that the primary determinant in depth of penetration is the wavelength of the radiation, not the energy, which is why you can operate your ridiculously high energy devices and get only an inch penetration, and yet why a microwave running on AC power can wholly cook things. This whole thing rings false: if you are who you claim you are, then you are dangerously ignorant of your own job, a job on which other people's lives depend. If you are who you claim you are, I very much hope you will attend new training.

This study appears, at first blush, to make the error of...

How would you know? You haven't even read it! ... to make the error of assuming that association of two disparate events demonstrates cause and effect.

If you'd read it, you'd know it didn't make that error (it's called the fallacy of conjunction, which an educated person should also know.)

If the brain is more active, their study design fails to prove that it is due to the radiation.

It has no such failure, and if you'd bother to read something before you criticised it, you'd know that. Of course, as a purported doctor, you should also be familiar with single-blind testing, which is in what they engaged, and whose specific nature is to eliminate the problem you're pretending you saw in a document you admit you didn't see.

Maybe the brain becomes more excitable because the study subject just got a phone call from a friend or loved one?

The subjects weren't receiving calls. Read the paper before criticising obvious falsehoods.

It might be that the original article addresses some of these shortcomings.

I should hope that in the future you have the decency to not karma whore like this. This sort of nonsense grandstanding and ego-driven lying (yes, I'm calling you a liar - you're criticising something you've never read with things that are patently false, and feigning comprehension of things you obviously don't comprehend) is the primary basis of disinformation.

As a (supposed) doctor, you of all people should know how dangerous and unethical this is. You're lucky I don't know where you work.

Aural Exciter

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Re:Aural Exciter

[khallow]

Assuming the story is for real, it doesn't mean that WiMAX is responsible, but rather that people are blaming WiMAX for health problems that cropped up then. After all, people will become unhealthy even under normal circumstances. Here, we have no comparison of the symptoms to what would normally occur nor any indication of how much exposure to radio frequencies these people are getting. My take is that this sounds like a mix of natural illness and hysteria gussied up as the WiMAX threat. It's the typical, uncritical tripe you get from newspapers.

This isn't news

[EZLeeAmused]

It has been known for many years that cell phone radiation stimulates the brains of product liability lawyers.

A river in egypt

[Scrameustache]

I believe that my driving is no worse with the cell phone

I don't care if you believe pixies will magically steer your car away from accidents. I'm telling you: People driving with cell phones drive worse than without the cell phone.

This isn't an opinion, nor a belief, it's an observation.

Driving while distracted varies by individual

[davidwr]

The more distracted you are the worse off you'll be able to react in an emergency.

Distractions come in many flavors besides cell phone use. Noisy kids in the back seat. Changing the radio dial. Unexpected construction signs. Flashing billboards. Other drivers honking. A news bulletin on the radio.

It is each driver's responsibility to know how much each distraction will impair him and how much impairment he can handle given traffic and road conditions.

On familiar road with little or no traffic and no uncontrolled intersections you can afford a lot more distraction than in the middle of a congested urban street where drivers may be making sudden stops and turns.

A new cellphone user may funble with it, have a hard time finding the buttons, and be otherwise distracted. An experienced user may be able to dial and carry on a "non-thinking" conversation with little or no impairment. Some drivers may even be able to carry on "deep thought" conversations without putting themselves or others at risk.

Know your limits. Respect them. For your sake and the sake of others.