Study: Cell Phone Emissions Cause Brain Stimulation

MIAMI (CBS4) - A new study published in the Journal of American Medical Association may re-ignite the debate over whether cell phone frequencies have negative health effects on the body.

The article, posted Tuesday, found that electromagnetic radiation from a cell phone's antenna appears to activate regions of the brain near the signal to unusually high levels, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The study, led by a well-known neuroscientist at the National Institute of Health opens the debate if the nation's 300 million cell phones manipulate how humans think and act.

"Because there's been such a massive expansion in cellphone use these past 15 to 20 years, it behooves us to try to understand whether, if we use these devices repeatedly and intensively for years, do they have lasting effects?" said study leader Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who researches how addiction affects the brain.

To conduct the study, researchers examined the brains of 47 healthy test subjects using positron emission tomography, commonly known as PET scanning. They found a marked increasing the brain cell activity, due to cells consuming energy nearby from cellular phone signals.

They also found that different parts of the brain were affected by cell phone emissions, depending on how close the phone's antenna was to the head.

Scientists ran several tests that to rule out that the increased brain activity was the result of stimulation, such as someone talking on the other end of the phone. They connected the phones to a recorded message, but the live audio signal was muted so the test subjects heard silence. The result: same activity levels in regions of the brain.

Despite all of the findings, the study did not conclude that cell phone frequencies cause brain cancers.

Source: The Los Angeles Times