PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Myriam Balerna AU - Arko Ghosh TI - Neuronal control of the fingertips is socially configured in touchscreen smartphone users AID - 10.1101/064485 DP - 2016 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 064485 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/18/064485.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/18/064485.full AB - As a common neuroscientific observation, the more a body part is used, the less variable the corresponding computations become. We here report a more complicated scenario concerning the fingertips of smartphone users. We sorted 21-days histories of touchscreen use of 57 volunteers into social and non-social categories. Sensorimotor variability was measured in a laboratory setting by simple button depressions and scalp electrodes (electroencephalogram, EEG). The ms range trial-to-trial variability in button depression was directly proportional to the number of social touches and inversely proportional to non-social touches. Variability of the early tactile somatosensory potentials was also proportional to the number of social touches, but not to non-social touches. The number of Apps and the speed of touchscreen use also reflected this variability. We conclude that smartphone use affects elementary computations even in tasks not involving a phone and suggest that social activities uniquely reconfigure the thumb to touchscreen use.