dr. nora volkow, who is the director of the national institute on drug abuse and recently dr. volkow you conducted a study on cell phones. what was that study? >> guest: the study was those trying to find out if the human brain is sensitive to the electromagnetic radiation emanated by cell phones which is not an obvious answer because it is a very low intensity and prior stories that have been done to address that question have provided very inconclusive results. some show increases in activity and in some show decreases in some showed no changes. so it's very difficult to extract the information information i could answer that question. is the human brain sensitive to the intensity of electro- magnetic radiation that are deposited in your brain when you are using a cell phone for regular communication? >> host: if that is the question you were looking to answer, what is the answer? >> guest: well we found that after 15 minutes of exposure of a cell phone, the areas of the brain that were closest to the antenna showed increased consumption of glucose. now, glucose is the way th

dr. nora volkow is the director of the national institute on drug abuse. she also conducted a recent study on cell phone abuse. you can find that online. and now joining us, dr. kenneth foster, a bioengineering professor at the university of pennsylvania who was done a lot of research on radio frequency imaging. we've been talking with dr. volkow about studies done by her group at nih. what is your opinion? >> i think it will be hard to interpret. one thing, the subjects received almost no exposure and the effect the reported was very small. so, it will be very hard to understand what it means. >> does it matter what kind of phone they used in the study? >> it does. this particular phone was a samsung handset. i cannot imagine of phone less able to reduce exposure to someone's brain. >> why? >> the antenna was in a part of the phone that was as far away from the brain as possible. the pattern of absorption was pretty much limited to the cheek and the job. another problem -- these kinds of loans under those conditions only transmit -- phones only transmit in

dr. volkow's study was not a breakthrough in terms of showing the effects on the brain, but it was one of the most elegant pieces of work ever done. the reason i say it wasn't a breakthrough which is other research which i dock unit in my -- document in my book found in 1994 that dna could be unraveled, and research in 2002 done in finland said you could get an effect on cerebral blood flow, and then in 2006 other studies were done also in finland showing that you could alter brain energy after cell phone use. unfortunately, many of these studies in the case of one appeared in finnish language and others in english have not garnered the headlines. of course, dr. volkow is to be commended because she's such an eminent researcher, and the study was a controlled study where they looked at the same person when they did not have the phone next to their head and when they did. so even though the exposures were quite low and the phone was simply seeking, as phones do, to get information from a tower with nothing else going on, there was a significant change in brain glucose in exactly those area