Research Proves Mobile Phones and Sleep Do Go Together
The quality of sleep for Australia's 12 million mobile phone users is not affected by calls on mobiles before bedtime, according to the world's largest independent study into mobile phones and sleep quality.
Although the results showed there were differences in the brain's electrical activity in the initial part of sleep as a result of using a mobile before bedtime, this had no affect on sleep variables such as the time it takes to get to sleep, the length of time asleep or whether the person slept lightly or deeply and therefore does not affect the overall quality of a person's sleep.
Conducted by Swinburne's Brain Sciences Institute as part of a larger investigation funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, the study examined the impact of mobile phone use immediately before bedtime on the brain and sleep patterns.
Fifty participants were exposed to a standard mobile phone mounted on the right side of their heads for 30 minutes prior to sleep in one session, and to a 'sham' phone in another session. During sleep, brain wave patterns, heart, breathing and muscle activity were measured.
PhD student, Sarah Loughran, undertook the study and said the results indicate that using a mobile phone before going to sleep does not appear to influence whether a person has a good night's sleep.
"These results are especially relevant to adolescents and young people who are probably the biggest users of mobile phones late at night."
The study confirms the results of a previous study carried out in Switzerland involving a smaller number of participants. The Swinburne study will be replicated in 2006 to confirm the current findings and further investigate individual differences in sleep patterns and brain activity following mobile phone exposure.
The results of the study will be published in Issue 16 of the journal Neuroreport."
Posted to the site on 13th October 2005
