Acute mobile phone effects on pre-attentive operation.
Papageorgiou CC, Nanou ED, Tsiafakis VG, Kapareliotis E, Kontoangelos KA, Capsalis CN, Rabavilas AD, Soldatos CR · 2006
View Original AbstractMobile phone radiation measurably alters brain wave patterns during basic information processing, affecting how your brain works before you're consciously aware.
Plain English Summary
Researchers exposed 19 healthy adults to 900 MHz mobile phone radiation while measuring their brain activity during a working memory test. The radiation significantly altered brain wave patterns called P50 components, which reflect how the brain processes information before conscious awareness. These changes suggest that mobile phone emissions can affect fundamental brain processing, even during brief exposures.
Why This Matters
This study adds important evidence to our understanding of how mobile phone radiation affects brain function at the cellular level. The P50 brain wave component measured here operates below conscious awareness, processing incoming information before you're even aware of it. What makes this research particularly significant is that it demonstrates measurable neurological changes during active phone use - the exact scenario millions of people experience daily. The 900 MHz frequency used matches older 2G networks, though modern phones operate across multiple frequency bands often at higher power levels. While the researchers don't specify exact exposure levels, the fact that they detected changes in pre-attentive brain processing suggests these effects occur at radiation levels typical of normal phone use. The reality is that your brain's electrical activity responds to electromagnetic fields in ways we're only beginning to understand.
Exposure Information
Specific exposure levels were not quantified in this study. The study examined exposure from: 900 MHz
Study Details
There is a debate whether electromagnetic field (EMF) emitted by mobile phones (MP) have an effect on cognitive functions. Since the auditory P50 component of event-related potentials (ERPs) reflects pre-attentive processing and working memory (WM) operation, the present study was designed to investigate whether the exposure to MP-EMF affects the patterns of the P50 component of ERPs elicited during a WM test.
The P50 elicited during a WM task and evoked by two warning stimuli low and high frequency (500 and ...
Results showed that the presence of MP-EMFs induced statistically significant increase in the ampli...
These findings provide evidence that the MP-EMF emitted by mobile phone affect pre-attentive information processing as it is reflected in P50 evoked potential. The basis of such an effect is unclear, although several possibilities exist and call for potential directions of future research.
Show BibTeX
@article{cc_2006_acute_mobile_phone_effects_2513,
author = {Papageorgiou CC and Nanou ED and Tsiafakis VG and Kapareliotis E and Kontoangelos KA and Capsalis CN and Rabavilas AD and Soldatos CR},
title = {Acute mobile phone effects on pre-attentive operation.},
year = {2006},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304394005013881},
}