4 ms·
Might have better luck with a PhD neuroscientist, but my guess (as a lowly MS) would be that it's something we can't really experiment with because of ethical i
by achileas 9y ago
Might have better luck with a PhD neuroscientist, but my guess (as a lowly MS) would be that it's something we can't really experiment with because of ethical issues, as you mentioned. While I studied the auditory system in grad school, I wasn't until today aware of effects of RF on hearing, but there does seem to be an effect at fairly high exposures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect
- walrus01 9y agoprobably the closest we could get to studying it would be to emplace a lot of instrumentation inside of a cadaver brain and focus the same power/frequency of microwave at it. kind of a messy process since to duplicate real world conditions you'd need to have the brain inside a skull...
- achileas 9y agoAnother issue is that you wouldn't have any sort of active responses that may induce or attenuate any effects of the radiation. An example from the auditory world is that for much of the history of auditory system research, it was thought that the cochlea was a passive system (with a little more nuance, the idea of an active cochlear mechanism was theorized but not confirmed). But that was because the technological limitations of the time only allowed experiments on dead cochleas (primarily by von Bekesy) - once otoacoustic emissions were first recorded (70s or early 80s) we finally had verification of the cochlear amplifier. More, if interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_amplifier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_amplifier