ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2019
Electromagnetic 0.1-100 kHz noise does not disrupt orientation in a night-migrating songbird implying a spin coherence lifetime of less than 10 µs.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 45 citations in OpenAlex.
- Directionality range in Emlen funnels.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2026Pooled it
- Protein and Solvent Reorganization Drives Radical Pair Stability in Avian Cryptochrome 4a.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
- Electromagnetic Interference in the Modern Era: Concerns, Trends, and Nanomaterial-Based Solutions.Nanomaterials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- European Robin Cryptochrome-4a Associates with Lipid Bilayers in an Ordered Manner, Fulfilling a Molecular-Level Condition for Magnetoreception.ACS chemical biology · 2025Article
- Magneto-oncology: a radical pair primer.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Review
- Orientation of birds in radiofrequency fields in the absence of the Earth's magnetic field: a possible test for the radical pair mechanism of magnetoreception.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Upper bound for broadband radiofrequency field disruption of magnetic compass orientation in night-migratory songbirds.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Driven Radical Motion Enhances Cryptochrome Magnetoreception: Toward Live Quantum Sensing.The journal of physical chemistry letters · 2022Article
- Morphology, biochemistry and connectivity of Cluster N and the hippocampal formation in a migratory bird.Brain structure & function · 2022Article
- Radical triads, not pairs, may explain effects of hypomagnetic fields on neurogenesis.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Observations about utilitarian coherence in the avian compass.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Environmental sources of radio frequency noise: potential impacts on magnetoreception.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2022Review
- Broadband 75-85 MHz radiofrequency fields disrupt magnetic compass orientation in night-migratory songbirds consistent with a flavin-based radical pair magnetoreceptor.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2022Article
- Article
- Angular Precision of Radical Pair Compass Magnetoreceptors.Biophysical journal · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
According to the currently prevailing theory, the magnetic compass sense in night-migrating birds relies on a light-dependent radical-pair-based mechanism. It has been shown that radio waves at megahertz frequencies disrupt magnetic orientation in migratory birds, providing evidence for a quantum-mechanical origin of the magnetic compass. Still, many crucial properties, e.g. the lifetime of the proposed magnetically sensitive radical pair, remain unknown. The current study aims to estimate the spin coherence time of the radical pair, based on the behavioural responses of migratory birds to broadband electromagnetic fields covering the frequency band 0.1-100 kHz. A finding that the birds were unable to use their magnetic compass under these conditions would imply surprisingly long-lived (greater than 10 µs) spin coherence. However, we observed no effect of 0.1-100 kHz radiofrequency (RF) fields on the orientation of night-migratory Eurasian blackcaps (
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.