Learning to text on a smartphone is nowhere near as difficult as learning to play the violin, but the two may have a few similarities.
Brain researchers have found that smartphone use shapes the parts of our brains that govern our finger movement in much the same way as learning to play an instrument, such as the violin.
Every region of the body -- from our toes to our fingers -- has a particular processing area in the part of our brains called the somatosensory cortex. These areas are "plastic," meaning they can change and grow throughout our lifetimes.
When one area is developed through repeated violin practising, for instance, the area of the brain that controls the violin-playing fingers is larger than in other people.
Arko Ghosh from the Institute of Neuroinformatics of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich decided to see if daily use of a smartphone also causes changes in the brain.
"Smartphones offer us an opportunity to understand how normal life shapes the brains of ordinary people," Ghosh explained in a statement.
His team and a team from the University of Fribourg used EEGs (electroencephalography) to measure the brain activity in 37 people, 26 of whom were touchscreen smartphone users; the rest used old-style cellphones.
Researchers placed 62 electrodes on the test subjects' heads and watched their brain activity while the subjects used their thumbs, forefingers and middle fingers to operate their phones.
They found that the cortical activity in smartphone users was quite different from those using traditional cellphones.
The more the smartphone users had used their phones in the previous 10 days, the greater the signal observed in the somatosensory cortex. And this link was strongest in the brain areas that controlled the thumbs.
"The digital technology we use on a daily basis shapes the sensory processing in our brains -- and on a scale that surprised us," Ghosh said.
The researchers say the changes are similar to what happens in violinists – but with a key difference. It seems that it didn't matter how long smartphone users had used their devices, there was an impact on their brains.
With violinists, on the other hand, the activity in the brain depends on the age at which they start playing – suggesting perhaps that mastering the skill of texting on a cellphone is significantly easier than mastering Brahms' Violin Concerto in D Major.
