All about yawning – Wel.nl

In 1923, British neurologist Sir Francis Walshe noticed something interesting while testing the reflexes of unilaterally paralyzed patients. When they yawned, they seemed to spontaneously regain their motor functions. It was as if the patients were no longer paralyzed for the six seconds or so that the yawn lasted.

Walshe concluded that yawning is activated by a primitive center in the brain that was beyond conscious control. So a person’s ability to yawn could remain completely intact, even if you have a spinal cord injury. Yawning is therefore one of our most primitive fundamental behaviors – and like Charles Darwin in 1838 al saw: , that “when you see a dog or a horse or a man yawning, you see how all animals are built on one structure.”

Yawning is one of the first things we learn to do. “Learning” might not even be quite the right word. Johanna de Vries, professor of obstetrics at the VU University of Amsterdam, discover that the human fetus yawns in the womb during the first trimester. And yawning is something we continue to do throughout our lives. “I decide don’t yawn,” Robert Provine, a neuroscientist and author of “Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond,” told me. “Just do it.

We yawn unconsciously and spontaneously. We can’t yawn on command – and sometimes we can’t help but yawn when the need arises. (Example: the famous yawn by Sasha Obama during his father’s inaugural address in 2013.) But what exactly do we get with all that yawning? If it’s that evolutionarily ancient, it must be Something do something important to survive.

In 400 BC. J.-C., Hippocrates theorized that yawning was somehow related to fever: we yawned to expel the bad air that had accumulated in our body, making us sick, much like “the great amount of steam from the boilers escapes when the water boils”. This intuition has proven remarkably resilient. still inside 2011 psychologist Gordon Gallup claimed that yawning is a cooling mechanism for the brain and body. But the evidence for these theories is not real, and for now, the physiological function of yawning remains elusive.

A more reliable clue to why we yawn may come from the exact moment we yawn. We typically think of yawning as a signal of sleepiness or boredom — one of the reasons Sasha Obama’s yawns seemed so inappropriate. Indeed, fatigue and boredom cause yawning. Although yawning is related to how much sleep we get, it seems to intensify when we feel subjectively drowsy. We yawn more often when we are tired. And we yawn in the hour immediately after waking up and the hour before bedtime. Yawning also increases with boredom. We also yawn when we to be hungry — a trend we seem to share with other primates To share.

Boredom, hunger, fatigue: these are all states in which we distract our attention. Thus, a yawn can serve as signal to the body to wake up, far to ensure that we remain vigilant.

You also yawn sometimes when you are clearly not bored. Olympic athletes sometimes yawn before their competition; violinists may yawn before playing a concert. So maybe we yawn when we change state.

But the idea that we yawn when we’re about to change state is probably not the whole story, for one simple reason: we yawn when we see or hear others yawn – whether or not we’re asleep. , bored, anxious or hungry. . This is a phenomenon known as contagious yawn. We also yawn just thinking about yawning. Chances are you just yawned because you’re reading this article.

One possibility is that the contagious yawn serves as a way to show empathy. While all vertebrate mammals yawn spontaneously, only humans and our closest relatives, chimpanzees , experiencing the contagion effect – a sign that there may be a deeper social meaning. Indeed, while spontaneous yawning takes place in the womb, Contagious Yawning Only Happens Later in life, just like empathy. Children under five don’t yawn more often than they normally would when watching yawning videos.

In one recent study, Frans de Waal and Matthew Campbell asked two groups of chimpanzees to watch a series of videos. In some videos they saw familiar chimps yawning or resting, and in others they saw unfamiliar chimps doing the same. Both groups yawned more often when they saw members of their own group yawning. A similar trend was observed in bonobos , who yawned more often as their social bond with the yawning monkey grew stronger. Some scientists cite other evidence from studies of people with schizophrenia and autism : In both cases, infectious yawning decreases, although spontaneous yawning remains intact.

Rather than empathy, the contagious nature of yawning may point to something completely different. “We get a glimpse of the human herd: yawning as a primary form of sociality,” says Professor Provine. Yawning may essentially be a social signaling mechanism. When we yawn, we communicate with each other. We send an outward sign of something within, whether it’s our boredom or our anxiety, our tiredness or our hunger – whenever we might need a helping hand. In fact, yawning may be the opposite of what we typically think. It’s less likely a signal that you’re tired than a signal that it’s time for everyone around you to take action.

In its most basic sense, a yawn is a form of communication – one of the most basic mechanisms we have for making ourselves understood to others without words. “Behavior is often said to leave no fossils,” says Provine. “Yawning is when you look at a behavioral fossil. You get a glimpse of how all the behavior once was.

Sources): New Yorker