Mind Control by Cell Phone
By R. Douglas Fields
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Electromagnetic signals from cell phones can change your brainwaves
and behavior. But don't break out the aluminum foil head shield just
yet.


Hospitals and airplanes ban the use of cell phones, because their
electromagnetic transmissions can interfere with sensitive electrical
devices. Could the brain also fall into that category? Of course, all
our thoughts, sensations and actions arise from bioelectricity
generated by neurons and transmitted through complex neural circuits
inside our skull. Electrical signals between neurons generate
electric fields that radiate out of brain tissue as electrical waves
that can be picked up by electrodes touching a person's scalp.
Measurements of such brainwaves in EEGs provide powerful insight into
brain function and a valuable diagnostic tool for doctors. Indeed, so
fundamental are brainwaves to the internal workings of the mind, they
have become the ultimate, legal definition drawing the line between
life and death.

Brainwaves change with a healthy person's conscious and unconscious
mental activity and state of arousal. But scientists can do more with
brainwaves than just listen in on the brain at work-they can
selectively control brain function by transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS). This technique uses powerful pulses of
electromagnetic radiation beamed into a person's brain to jam or
excite particular brain circuits.

Although a cell phone is much less powerful than TMS, the question
still remains: Could the electrical signals coming from a phone
affect certain brainwaves operating in resonance with cell phone
transmission frequencies? After all, the caller's cerebral cortex is
just centimeters away from radiation broadcast from the phone's
antenna. Two studies provide some revealing news.

The first, led by Rodney Croft, of the Brain Science Institute,
Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, tested
whether cell phone transmissions could alter a person's brainwaves.
The researchers monitored the brainwaves of 120 healthy men and women
while a Nokia 6110 cell phone—one of the most popular cell phones in
the world—was strapped to their head. A computer controlled the
phone's transmissions in a double-blind experimental design, which
meant that neither the test subject nor researchers knew whether the
cell phone was transmitting or idle while EEG data were collected.
The data showed that when the cell phone was transmitting, the power
of a characteristic brain-wave pattern called alpha waves in the
person's brain was boosted significantly. The increased alpha wave
activity was greatest in brain tissue directly beneath to the cell
phone, strengthening the case that the phone was responsible for the
observed effect.

Alpha Waves of Brain
Alpha waves fluctuate at a rate of eight to 12 cycles per second
(Hertz). These brainwaves reflect a person's state of arousal and
attention. Alpha waves are generally regarded as an indicator of
reduced mental effort, "cortical idling" or mind wandering. But this
conventional view is perhaps an oversimplification. Croft, for
example, argues that the alpha wave is really regulating the shift of
attention between external and internal inputs. Alpha waves increase
in power when a person shifts his or her consciousness of the
external world to internal thoughts; they also are the key brainwave
signatures of sleep.

Cell Phone Insomnia
If cell phone signals boost a person's alpha waves, does this nudge
them subliminally into an altered state of consciousness or have any
effect at all on the workings of their mind that can be observed in a
person's behavior? In the second study, James Horne and colleagues at
the Loughborough University Sleep Research Centre in England devised
an experiment to test this question. The result was surprising. Not
only could the cell phone signals alter a person's behavior during
the call, the effects of the disrupted brain-wave patterns continued
long after the phone was switched off.

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"This was a completely unexpected finding," Horne told me. "We didn't
suspect any effect on EEG [after switching off the phone]. We were
interested in studying the effect of mobile phone signals on sleep
itself." But it quickly became obvious to Horne and colleagues in
preparing for the sleep-research experiments that some of the test
subjects had difficulty falling asleep.

Horne and his colleagues controlled a Nokia 6310e cell phone—another
popular and basic phone—attached to the head of 10 healthy but sleep-
deprived men in their sleep research lab. (Their sleep had been
restricted to six hours the previous night.) The researchers then
monitored the men's brainwaves by EEG while the phone was switched on
and off by remote computer, and also switched
between "standby," "listen" and "talk" modes of operation for 30
minute intervals on different nights. The experiment revealed that
after the phone was switched to "talk" mode a different brain-wave
pattern, called delta waves (in the range of one to four Hertz),
remained dampened for nearly one hour after the phone was shut off.
These brainwaves are the most reliable and sensitive marker of stage
two sleep—approximately 50 percent of total sleep consists of this
stage—and the subjects remained awake twice as long after the phone
transmitting in talk mode was shut off. Although the test subjects
had been sleep-deprived the night before, they could not fall asleep
for nearly one hour after the phone had been operating without their
knowledge.

Although this research shows that cell phone transmissions can affect
a person's brainwaves with persistent effects on behavior, Horne does
not feel there is any need for concern that cell phones are damaging.
The arousal effects the researchers measured are equivalent to about
half a cup of coffee, and many other factors in a person's
surroundings will affect a night's sleep as much or more than cell
phone transmissions.

"The significance of the research," he explained, is that although
the cell phone power is low, "electromagnetic radiation can
nevertheless have an effect on mental behavior when transmitting at
the proper frequency." He finds this fact especially remarkable when
considering that everyone is surrounded by electromagnetic clutter
radiating from all kinds of electronic devices in our modern world.
Cell phones in talk mode seem to be particularly well-tuned to
frequencies that affect brainwave activity. "The results show
sensitivity to low-level radiation to a subtle degree. These findings
open the door by a crack for more research to follow. One only
wonders if with different doses, durations, or other devices, would
there be greater effects?"

Croft of Swinburne emphasizes that there are no health worries from
these new findings. "The exciting thing about this research is that
it allows us to have a look at how you might modulate brain function
and this [look] tells us something about how the brain works on a
fundamental level." In other words, the importance of this work is in
illuminating the fundamental workings of the brain-scientists can now
splash away with their own self-generated electromagnetic waves and
learn a great deal about how brainwaves respond and what they do.

Mind Matters is edited by Jonah Lehrer, the science writer behind the
blog The Frontal Cortex and the book Proust was a Neuroscientist.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Doug Fields is a developmental neuroscientist and Editor-in-Chief of
Neuron Glia Biology.

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