Wake
Up Call
The Scotsman
October 16, 2000
It
may be tempting to lie in bed, chatting to friends on your mobile phone, but
recent research shows that the electromagnetic fields emitted by the phones
can disrupt your sleep pattern. According to researchers from the University
of Zurich, mobile phone use affects the brains physiology, significantly
increasing brain activity during early, non-rapid-eye-movement sleep.
Alexander
Borbely and Peter Ackermann subjected 16 people to the type of electromagnetic
radiation emitted by mobile phones for a 30-minute period half an hour before
they went to sleep. . They noted that the increased brain activity lasted for
as long as 50 minutes. Borbely and Ackermann have concluded that the mobile
phones affect areas of the brain that are responsible for repetitive patterns
of brain activity peculiar to non-REM sleep.