Long talks on cell phones may impair memory

Washington, Dec 7 (ANI): Long talks on cell phones can have an adverse impact on memory, say researchers.

In the study involving rat models, researchers from the Division of Neurosurgery, Lund University, in Sweden had found that microwave radiation from cell phones could affect the so-called blood-brain barrier.

This barrier protects the brain by preventing substances circulating in the blood from penetrating into the brain tissue and damaging nerve cells.

Lead researcher Henrietta Nittby found that rats exposed to mobile phone radiation for two hours a week for more than a year showed poorer results on a memory test.

The memory test consisted of releasing the rats in a box with four objects mounted in it.

These objects were different on the two occasions, and the placement of the objects was different from one time to the other.

The actual test trial was the third occasion. The rats encountered two of the objects from the first and two of the objects from the second occasion.

The control rats spent more time exploring the objects from the first occasion, which were more interesting since the rats had not seen them for some time. The experiment rats, on the other hand, evinced less pronounced differences in interest.

In another study conducted by Leif Salford have previously found that albumin, a protein that function as a transport molecule in the blood, leaks into brain tissue when laboratory animals are exposed to mobile phone radiation.

The research team also found certain nerve damage in the form of damaged nerve cells in the cerebral cortex and in the hippocampus, the memory center of the brain.

"We now see that things happen to the brains of lab animals after cell phone radiation. The next step is to try to understand why this happens," Science Daily quoted Henrietta Nittby as saying. (ANI)