We all know that cellphone use can stimulate the brain to work a bit harder. “Mr. Skerrett? This is Dr. LeWine's office. Do you have a minute to discuss your test results?” or “Dad, a bunch of kids are going to Casey's house after the dance. Can I go?” But a brand new study has been published Jama I ponder what the energy emanating from the phone, not only the data it provides, is doing to my brain.
Here is the study in short. Dr. Nora Volkow and her colleagues recruited 47 volunteers to have their brain activity measured twice with a PET scanner. Both times the volunteer had a cellphone strapped to every ear. During one measurement, each phones were switched off. During the second, one phone was on but silent so the volunteer didn’t understand it was on. The other was not noted. Each session lasted roughly one hour. The scans showed a slight increase within the brain's use of glucose (blood sugar) when the phone was on, but only in parts of the brain near the antennae.
It was a wonderful study. The researchers took pains to evaluate the sources of error. They used a control (each phones off) against which to check the effect of a “live” cellphone. They used cell phones in each ear, one on and one off, to see if the effect was localized. They silenced the phone to eliminate the likelihood that there was any brain activity brought on by hearing the sound coming through the phone's speaker. So the result might be an actual one, not a sampling or measurement error.
What does this mental activity mean? No one really knows. Like Dr. Volkow told NPR“I can't say if it's bad that he [cell phones] Increasing glucose metabolism, or if it can be good.”
The big problem, after all, is brain cancer, not brain activity. This is a controversial and hotly debated topic. But with Contradictory evidence By linking cellphone use to brain cancer, this study will likely push the controversy in each directions. Some will see the outcomes as reassuring—brain activation during 50 minutes on a cellphone was lower than if you opened your eyes or listened to music. Others would see brain activity as a possible early step toward cancer.
I agree with Dr. Volkow and others who imagine that this study signifies that it’s value taking a more in-depth have a look at how the energy emitted by a cellphone, cellphone, or some other energy-emitting device affects our body. How does it interact with vowels? the brain. I'm also going to avoid 50-minute conversations via cellphone (study period) and save them for after I'm using a headset or my old-fashioned, cordless landline.