{"id":76968,"date":"2014-12-24T07:47:01","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T07:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=76968"},"modified":"2014-12-24T07:47:01","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T07:47:01","slug":"smartphones-changing-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=76968","title":{"rendered":"Smartphones &#8216;changing our brains&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"story_continues_1\" class=\"introduction\">Our brains are adapting to touchscreen smartphone technology say researchers who have carried out a study on human volunteers.<\/p>\n<p>The scientists used something called electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain activity.<\/p>\n<p>They found distinct differences between smartphone users and people who used &#8216;conventional&#8217; cellphones.<\/p>\n<p>Smartphone users had more attuned fingers and thumbs, based on their EEG readings.<\/p>\n<p>Of the 37 volunteers, 26 were touchscreen smartphone users while 11 used &#8216;old-fashioned&#8217; mobile phones.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"cross-head\">EEG<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"caption full-width\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/79909000\/jpg\/_79909251_c0032235-electroencephalography,_artwork-spl-1.jpg\" alt=\"EEG \" width=\"624\" height=\"351\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"caption full-width\">EEG measures and records the electrical activity of the brain<\/div>\n<p>The EEG readings looked at the electrical messages sent back and forth between the brain and the hands via nerves.<\/p>\n<p>Multiple electrodes placed on the volunteer&#8217;s scalp recorded these exchanges about sensation.<\/p>\n<p>From this, the researchers were able to build up a picture or map of how much brain tissue is devoted to a given body region.<\/p>\n<p>The results revealed discernable differences between touchscreen smartphone users and people with conventional cellphones.<\/p>\n<p>Smartphone users had bigger EEG brain activity measurements in response to mechanical touch on the thumb, index and middle fingers.<\/p>\n<p>And this appeared to be linked to how often they used their touchscreens &#8211; the more frequent, the greater the EEG response.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers say their findings, published in the journal Current Biology, make sense given that the brain is malleable and can be moulded by experience.<\/p>\n<p>For example, in violinists, the brain area representing the fingers that play the instrument is larger than in non-musicians.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers suspect the same is true with smartphones &#8211; repeated use sculpts the brain.<\/p>\n<p>Study author Arko Ghosh, from the Institute of Neuroinformatics of the University of Zurich, said: &#8220;I was really surprised by the scale of the changes introduced by the use of smartphones.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said the discovery underlines how commonplace smartphones have become in our daily lives.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our brains are adapting to touchscreen smartphone technology say researchers who have carried out a study on human volunteers. The scientists used something called electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain activity. They found distinct differences between smartphone users and people who used &#8216;conventional&#8217; cellphones. Smartphone users had more attuned fingers and thumbs, based on their EEG [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":56153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[15,38],"class_list":["post-76968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-chinese","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}