Growing number of smartphone users are undergoing an alteration in their brain activity in relation to fingertips, says new research.

Lead study author Arko Ghosh of the University of Zurich in Switzerland, and his team explain that every part of the body has a dedicated processing region in the somatosensory cortex of the brain - an area associated with sensation, movement planning and visual stimuli

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Ghosh and his colleagues wanted to study the everyday plasticity, or adaptability, of the human brain in using their fingertips on smartphone touch-screen.

They have used electroencephalography (EEG) to follow the brain response to mechanical touch on the thumb, index and middle fingertips of touchscreen phone users compared to users who used older version of mobile phone (without touchscreens).

Researchers found out that smartphone users' brain activity in the cortex – the part associated with thumb and index fingertips – was directly proportional to the intensity of phone use.

They made comparison to the phone's battery logs to see how much that person had been using their smartphone or cellphone.

The more a person used their phone, the more the brain activity associated with the thumb tip surged, whether or not that thumb was using a touchscreen or not.

“Sensory processing in the contemporary brain is continuously shaped by personal digital technology," Ghosh and his team concluded.

"Our results suggest that repetitive movements on the smooth touchscreen reshaped sensory processing from the hand and that the thumb representation was updated daily depending on its use. We propose that cortical sensory processing in the contemporary brain is continuously shaped by the use of personal digital technology," he added.

The new findings were published in the journal Current Biology.

Tagstouchscreen, Mobile Phones, brain activity, sensory processing, brain process, brain cortex