Wireless radiation and the brain

Electromagnetic radiation affects the brain, and this can translate to effects on emotions, behaviour and disease, say the authors of a recent scientific review.

Cuicui Hu and team reviewed research on the effects of exposure on the brain and nervous system and found that it can cause structural and functional changes in the brain and, hence, the nervous system.

EMR affects neurotransmitters—chemical messengers that convey information through the nervous system and are enormously important parts of the neural circuitry. They are involved in brain development and allow neurons to communicate with each other. Changes in neurotransmitter levels can lead to problems such as depression, schizophrenia and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Hu’s review found that EMR affected key neurotransmitters. These include:

  • Dopamine—the neurotransmitter for reward, learning, emotion, motor control and psychiatric and neurological disorders

  • Norepinephrine and epinephrine—involved in stress, attention, sleep, inflammation and the autonomic nervous system responses

  • Serotonin—involved in regulating mood, feeding, cognition, memory, sleep, pain and temperature

  • Glutamate—involved in learning and memory

  • GABA—involved in regulating emotion, sleep, memory, anti-hypertension, analgesia, anti-fatigue

  • Glycine—an antioxidant, a building-block of protein and involved in countering inflammation

  • Acetylcholine—involved in cognition

  • Peptide neurotransmitters—involved in learning and memory

  • Nitric oxide—high levels which can cause neuronal damage.

How EMR causes the effects on neurotransmitters that this review reported is not certain, however, the authors suggested a few possibilities. Effects could be due to changes in the electrical activity of the brain. They could result from cell membrane damage (such as increased permeability) or from changes in the activity of voltage-gated calcium channels and increased levels of oxidative stress.

Whatever the mechanism, the findings of this review show that exposure is causing changes to the brain that could have an adverse impact on different aspects of an organism’s functioning.

Cuicui Hu et al, ‘Effects of Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Radiation on Neurotransmitters in the Brain’, Front. Public Health, 17 August 2021  , https://www.frontiersin.org/ar...;

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