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

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.

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.