Whenever someone tells you that constantly using your smartphone is bad for your health, you better have a copy of this scientific study from Current Biology on your person to show them that at least, your brain is not atrophying. It says that the more you use your thumbs and other fingertips, the greater your brain activity is. So take that grandma who always wants me to put my cellphone down.
According to the study conducted by the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, led by Arko Ghosh, a lot of the fingertip-associated brain signals can be linked to how often people used their fingers to swipe through a smartphone. And that is how they started with the study, by looking at the data footprints and comparing it to the brain plasticity of those who use smartphones, compared to those who use the old kinds of mobile phones. Ghosh says that neuroscientists have only to look at the data from smartphone usage to start studying the extent of how our brains and fingertip usage are interconnected.
The result of their study shows that the more people use their thumb, index, and middle fingers when touching their device's screens, the more the electrical acitivity in our brains are enhanced. They used electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor the brain's response and saw that the amount of activity in the part of it that is connected to the thumb and index fingers are directly proportional to the intensity of use of the smartphones. They suggest that it was the repetitive sliding movements over the surface of the phones that has reshaped the sensory processing from the hand to the brain.
However, this study doesn't give you the excuse to be swiping away on your phones 24/7 just to exercise your brain's elasticity. There are still other studies that have linked excessive mobile device use to other motor dysfunctions and even pain. Also, the study discussed here is published in a journal that is part of the Cell Press, so maybe we should take it with a tiny grain of salt.
VIA: Science Daily