Typing so often on our smart phone is not only changing the way we interact socially and walk, for example, but it is also altering our brain. This change occurs due to the continued and predominant use of the thumbs to use our devices . The study has been carried out by a team of neuroinformaticians from the University of Zurich and the Federal Polytechnic School of Zurich (Switzerland) and is reported in the journal Current Biology .
What impact is the dexterity that we are obtaining in the fingers by the use of current mobiles having on our brain? This was the starting point of the research led by Arko Ghosh, discovering that the daily plasticity of the brain can be analyzed depending on the use we make of our mobile. Thus, “smartphones offer us the opportunity to understand how normal life shapes the brains of ordinary people,” explains Ghosh.
To reach this conclusion, the scientists had the participation of 37 right-handed people, 26 of them habitual users of mobile phones with a touch screen and 11 users who still used old mobiles . They analyzed the activation in the sensorimotor cortex promoted by the movements of the fingers (thumb, index and middle finger) using electroencephalography. The results revealed that the cortical representation in the participants who used smartphones or smart phones was different from that of less modern mobile phone users and that the more frequent it was, the more it influenced cortical activity since the greater the signal in the brain , especially, in the area that represented the thumb .
This transformation of the brain can be explained in the same way that violinists, for example, acquire a higher level of the representation area of the fingers that guide the instrument due to practice. That is, each area of the body has a particular processing area in our emotional brain center . They are not watertight and immovable areas, but they can change depending on our daily activities.
” The digital technology we use on a daily basis shapes sensory processing in the brain and on a scale that surprised us,” Ghosh clarifies.
