Cell phone use and attention

The September issue of the International Journal of Neuroscience, 2007 published an article entitled, Frequent Mobile Phone Use “Might” Improve Mental Concentration.

The study was performed by researchers from Brainclinics Diagnostics and the Radboud University department of Biological Psychology both from Nijmegen (the Netherlands), the Institute of Psychiatry (London) and the Brain Resource Company (Sydney, Australia).

The researchers based their findings on data from 300 people. This group was segmented into 100 ‘frequent mobile phone users,’ 100 ‘non-mobile phone users,’ and a control group of 100 people. Differences in brain activity on tests of attention, memory, and executive function were measured using QEEG or quantitative EEG. QEEG is more art than science and is a relatively nascent technology.

Curiously, the researchers concluded that frequent mobile phone users demonstrated slowed brain function, but the users also showed better focused attention. The researchers attribute better focused attention as a ‘learning effect’ related to cell phone users filtering out distractions when making phone calls in distractive surroundings.

Wisely, the researchers note that these data are preliminary and need to be replicated. Furthermore, it is difficult to determine whether the healthy or unhealthy.

“The frequent mobile phone user group used their mobile phone – at the time of data collection – only 2.4 years on average which can currently be considered as a short time. Therefore, it is to be expected that the observed effects in this study can be more severe with prolonged mobile phone use” according to Martijn Arns, co-author of the study.