Study: Frequent mobile phone use slows brain activity

Feeling slow? Not quite as quick on the uptake as you used to be? Your mobile phone could be to blame for your slow wit. Frequent mobile phone users have demonstrated slowed brain function in a recent European-Australian study.

The study used data from 300 people of which 100 were frequent mobile phone users, 100 did not use mobile phones, and 100 were intermediate users.

Differences in brain activity (measured using QEEG or quantative EEG), neuropsychological functions such as attention, memory and executive function and personality traits were assessed.

The brain activity from frequent mobile phone users shows more slow activity (increased Delta and Theta) and a slowing of the Alpha Peak Frequency, interpreted as a general slowing of brain activity.

According to head researcher Martijn Arns, these effects could not be explained by the differences in personality and focused attention.

“In Alzheimer’s dementia you also find a severely slowing of brain activity. However, the slowing found in this study, with mobile phone users, can still be considered within normal limits,” said Arns.

“The frequent mobile phone user group used their mobile phone – at the time of data collection – only 2.4 years on average which can currently be considered as a short time. Therefore, it is to be further investigated whether the observed effects in this study are more severe with prolonged mobile phone use.”

Interestingly, frequent mobile phone users showed improved focused attention. This was explained by a learning effect due to making more phone calls in busy environments, whereby people learn to focus better on the phone call and filter out irrelevant environmental information.

This study is said to be the first to investigate the long term effects of mobile phone use on brain function. Earlier studies have mostly investigated the acute effects of mobile phone use on brain function.

This study was carried out by researchers from Brainclinics Diagnostics, Radboud University department of Biological Psychology, Nijmegen (the Netherlands), the Institute of Psychiatry (London) and the Brain Resource Company (Sydney).

Data has already been collected from more than 20.000 people to replicate this study and further investigate the adverse health effects.

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