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Published on: April 30, 2020
Effects of thirty-minute mobile phone use on visuo-motor reaction time
Yasuo Terao1, Tomoko Okano, Toshiaki Furubayashi
1Department of Neurology, Division of Neuroscience, Graduate School of Medicine the University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan. yterao-tky@umin.ac.jp
Objective:
To investigate whether exposure to pulsed high-frequency electromagnetic field (pulsed EMF) emitted by a mobile phone has short-term effects on the visuo-motor choice reaction time (RT) and movement time (MT).
Methods:
A double blind, counterbalanced crossover design was employed. In 16 normal subjects, we studied the performance of a visuo-motor precued choice reaction time task (PCRT) before and after exposure to EMF emitted by a mobile phone for 30 minutes or sham exposure.
Results:
The RTs and MTs under different conditions of precue information were not affected by exposure to pulsed EMF emitted by a mobile phone or by sham phone use.
Conclusions:
Thirty minutes of mobile phone use has no significant short-term effect on the cortical visuo-motor processing as studied by the present PCRT task.
Significance:
This is the first study to investigate visuo-motor behavior in relation to mobile phone exposure. No significant effect of mobile phone use was demonstrated on the performance of the visuo-motor reaction time task.
