Mind Control by Cell Phone

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http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=mind-control-by-cell & sc=rssBy R. Douglas FieldsElectromagnetic 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.-------------------------