Mobile phones modulate response patterns of human brain activity

Mobile phones emit a pulsed high-frequency electromagnetic field (PEMF) which may penetrate the scalp and the skull. Increasingly, there is an interest in the interaction of this pulsed microwave radiation with the human brain. Our investigations show that these electromagnetic fields alter distinct aspects of the brain's electrical response to acoustic stimuli. More precisely, our results demonstrate that aspects of the induced but not the evoked brain activity during PEMF exposure can be different from those not influenced by PEMF radiation. This effect appears in higher frequency bands when subjects process task-relevant target stimuli but was not present for irrelevant standard stimuli. As the induced brain activity in higher frequency bands has been proposed to be a correlate of coherent high-frequency neuronal activity, PEMF exposure may provide means to systematically alter the pattern fluctuations in neural mass activity.