News

Italian studies show phones are "exciting" to brain cells

And just to make sure we know how dangerous phones are: Reuters reports that Italian researchers have shown "an effect" on brain cells of actually making a call.

The report quoted the as saying that "Dr. Paolo Rossini of Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan and colleagues used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or TMS to check brain function while people used these phones. They had 15 young male volunteers use a GSM 900 cell phone for 45 minutes." According to the Annals of Neurology, in 12 of the 15, the cells in the motor cortex adjacent to the cell phone showed excitability during phone use but returned to normal within an hour.

Exactly what "excitability" means in this context is open to debate. The word is used about brain cells of epilepsy sufferers, and the motor cortex is known as "the excitable area" because it's possible to make muscles twitch by stimulating it. Rossini says it's worth trying to find out whether this can be used to benefit the brain, or whether it's likely to cause damage - but at this stage, neither conclusion can be drawn.

Full story at Reuters