There has been an abundance of research dedicated to how cell phone (particularly smartphone) use affects our health and well-being. Whether it be our interaction with society, our psychological dependence or even our posture, it’s clear that technology plays a major role in our daily lives. But new research shows that it’s not all necessarily detrimental. In fact, our constant swiping and tapping on smartphones in particular can contribute to our brain’s plasticity.
A new study out of the University of Zurich in Switzerland shows that the delicate, repetitive finger movements that people use on their smartphone’s touch screen result in a change in the brain’s sensory-processing area, as reported in by Huffington Post.
The results of the study suggest that our daily smartphone use gives scientists insights on how our neuronal networks conform to our behavior and environment.
“Smartphones offer us an opportunity to understand how normal life shapes the brains of ordinary people,” said study co-author and neuroscientist Arko Ghosh.
The body’s entire surface is mapped out in a part of the brain called the somatosensory cortex, which receives signals from sensory receptors on the skin and other organs. So, for example, if you touch something with your fingertip, or if you bite your tongue, the region of the cortex that corresponds with those places in the body would receive the signal.
The regions used become extra sensitive when that area of the body is used frequently. So a violinist, for example, has greater activity in the somatosensory cortext (because of fingertip use) compared to those who have less active fingertip use.
In the study, researchers set out to examine whether people who frequently use their fingers to work with smartphones undergo a change in the somatosensory cortex. They used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the brain’s electrical activity in response to touch on the thumb, index and middle fingertips. Of the 37 participants in the study, 26 used touch screen smartphones and 11 used old-fashioned cellphones.
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It turns out, people who use touch screens have greater activity in the brain areas associated with finger tips, especially the thumb.
“Remarkably, the thumb tip was sensitive to the day-to-day fluctuations in phone use: the shorter the time elapsed from an episode of intense phone use, the larger the cortical potential associated with it,” the researchers wrote in their study, published Dec. 23 in the journal Current Biology. “Repetitive movements on the smooth touch screen reshaped sensory processing from the hand and that the thumb representation was updated daily, depending on its use,” the researchers said.
The research doesn’t exactly spell out what the benefits of this continuous reshaping that occurs, or if there are any, but it’s clear that smartphone technology is officially changing our brains.
