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Krause and colleagues previously reported that electromagnetic fields (EMFs) affected EEG brain oscillatory activity during various cognitive tasks. In this study they tested children. This is the first report on the effect of EMFs from a mobile phone on children. Fifteen children aged from 10-14 years were tested. A standard GSM phone was mounted to the participant's head over the left posterior temporal region. The loudspeaker was removed and the battery changed to a model that did not emit a noise. A pulsed 902 MHz frequency EMF was used. The SAR averaged over 1 g of tissue was 1.40 W/kg, with a peak of 1.98 W/kg. The subjects performed an auditory memory task while the phone was either in the on or off mode. The order of the active mode was counterbalanced and the study was double-blind. An EEG with 19 electrodes was recorded during the testing. During memory encoding, the active mode modulated the event-related desynchronization/synchronization (ERD/ERS) responses in the ~4-8Hz EEG frequencies. During recognition, the active mode transformed these brain oscillatory responses in the ~4-8 and ~15 frequencies. The physiological mechanism underlying the EMF effects on brain oscillatory responses remains unclear.
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