Impact of mobile phone use on the brain activity: Audio call vs video call

The growing dependence on mobile phones for communication has raised concerns regarding the neurological impact of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields, especially in audio and video calls. This research investigates the impact of WhatsApp audio and video calls on cognitive load and mental fatigue using non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) signals. EEG signals were recorded from 28 healthy participants during baseline, 3-minute, and 4-minute call sessions, with participants equally distributed between audio and video call groups. The signals were preprocessed using bandpass filtering, continuous wavelet transform, and independent component analysis to isolate theta and alpha frequency bands. Cognitive load was assessed using the theta-alpha ratio (TAR), and mental fatigue was measured using Mahalanobis distance-based analysis of theta and alpha rhythms. The findings reveal that video calls impose significantly more cognitive load (e.g., TAR mean: 0.78 (SD: 0.36) for 3-minute video call and mean: 0.76 (SD: 0.37) for 3-minute audio call, p