Mobiles can damage memory

Swedish researchers have found memory impairment in rats exposed to cellphone radiation for two hours every week for more than a year.

The rats subjected to a memory test were released into a box with four objects. These objects were changed on two occasions and their position was also altered both the times. The actual test trial was the third occasion. This time the rats encountered two of the objects from the first occasion and two of the objects from the second.

The rats, used as control, spent more time exploring the objects from the first occasion, which they considered more interesting since they had not seen them for some time. The experiment rats, on the other hand, evinced a lesser pronounced difference in interest.

Henrietta Nittby and her supervisor Leif Salford, of the neurosurgery division of Lund University, Sweden, believe that the findings may be related to the team's earlier findings, that microwave radiation from cellphones can affect the so-called blood-brain barrier. This is a barrier that protects the brain by preventing substances circulating in the blood from penetrating into the brain tissue and damaging nerve cells.