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Cell phones transmit information using low frequency radio signals, which may expose the user to unhealthy radiation when streaming or downloading large files. Smartphone radiation could be destroying the memory performance, cumulative exposure to mobile devices over the course of a year negatively affects the figural memory.
Figural memory is located in the right hemisphere of the brain and refers to human ability to make sense of objects including images, patterns and shapes. Researchers from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) studied different smartphones users, they looked at the link between their daily exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) and their memory performance.
The effects of RF-EMF were more pronounced regular users of smartphone on the right side of their head. This may suggest that indeed RF-EMF absorbed by the brain is responsible for the observed associations’, said Martin Röösli, Head of Environmental Exposures and Health at Swiss TPH. Other aspects of wireless communication use, such as sending texts, playing games or browsing the Internet will also cause marginal RF-EMF exposure.
Participants completed questionnaire that assessed their mobile phone and media usage, as well as their psychological and physical health. Immediately afterwards they did computerised cognitive tests, participants carried a portable measurement device- exposimeter with an integrated GPS for three consecutive days.
Changes in figural memory score were negatively correlated with cordless phone calls and, in tendency, with the duration of mobile phone calls and the cumulative RF-EMF brain dose’, researchers found. The potential effect of RF-EMF exposure to the brain is a relatively new field of scientific inquiry, potential risks to the brain can be minimized by using headphones or the loud speaker while calling, in particular when network quality is low and the mobile phone is functioning at maximum power.
The research, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found that in rats with an amputation-like injury the animals showed clear evidence of pain in the presence of the signals. Dr Mario Romero-Ortega, senior author of the study and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, said: ‘Our study provides evidence, for the first time, that subjects exposed to cellphone towers at low, regular levels can actually perceive pain.
The rats were exposed to EMF signals equivalent to standing near a mobile phone tower almost 131ft (40 metres) away. Animals received exposure for ten minutes, once a week for eight weeks. They found that after four weeks, 88 per cent of rats with the nerve injury showed a definite pain response to the signal. Electromagnetic fields evoked pain that is perceived before neuroma formation.