Huber
Fakultäten » Medizinische Fakultät » Kinderspital Zürich: Medizinische Klinik » Entwicklungspädiatrie, Abteilung » Prof. Dr. Reto Huber » Huber
Completed research project
| Title / Titel | Cell phones, sleep and cognitive performance | ||||
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| Abstract (PDF, 14 KB) | |||||
| Summary / Zusammenfassung | We have good evidence to belief that pulsed electromagnetic fields (EMF) as used for mobile communication are able to interact with the waking and sleep electroencephalogram (EEG; Huber et al., 2003). We know that these interactions can outlast the exposure and seem to be dependent on the pulsed nature of the exposure. Also other, repetitive stimulations, e.g. visual checkerboard or simple tones, may lead to long lasting changes in brain activity, i.e. induce cortical plasticity (Clapp et al., 2005; Teyler et al., 2005). Hence, the question arises whether the pulsed EMF used for mobile communication is able to induce such long lasting changes. Indeed, a recent paper shows that mobile phones operating in the GSM frequency range affect cortical responsiveness (Ferreri et al., 2006) – some initial evidence for the induction of cortical plasticity, which presumably represents the basic mechanism of learning and memory. There is increasing evidence for a close relationship between learning and sleep. For example, the performance in numerous learning paradigms seems to benefit from sleep (Born et al., 2006). Thus, a major goal of our project is to investigate whether the EMF induced changes in the sleep EEG are capable to interact with sleep dependent learning processes. In other words, we will investigate whether reports of EMF exposure related memory performance benefits (e.g. Koivisto et al., 2000) and the EMF exposure associated changes in the sleep EEG may share a common mechanism. Children and adolescents show increased sleep need (Jenni and Carskadon, 2004). At the same time numerous studies show an increased potential for cortical plasticity in children and adolescents. Together with the increasing concern that children and adolescents are more vulnerable to GSM EMF provides us a conclusive rational to conduct our experiment in adolescents. In the proposed experiment, adolescents (n=15) are trained on a challenging memory task right before they are allowed to sleep. During sleep subjects are exposed to short square-pulses of the GSM carrier frequency every 1-3 seconds throughout the night. Next morning the subjects are retested on the task to assess sleep dependent performance improvement. The exact same procedure is repeated under sham exposure. The experiments are carried out in the sleep facility of the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Zurich under a collaboration with Prof. Peter Achermann. The EMF exposure setup will be designed by the Foundation for Research on Information Technologies in Society (IT’IS). In summary, our project hereby explores mechanisms of how EMF pulses affect cortical activity during sleep and how this change might be translated into changes in cognitive performance. |
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| Keywords / Suchbegriffe | electromagnetic fields, sleep homeostasis, handy, | ||||
| Project leadership and contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte |
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| Funding source(s) / Unterstützt durch |
Foundation Forschungsstiftung Mobilkommunikation |
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| In collaboration with / In Zusammenarbeit mit |
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| Duration of Project / Projektdauer | Apr 2009 to Mar 2011 |