“A yawn is quite catching…
…you see, like a cough. It just takes one yawn to start other yawns off.”
That’s Dr. Seuss, in The Sleep Book, one of the childhood favorites of my sleep-resistant son.
And it’s true; I’m sure you’ve noticed how hard it is to resist yawning when you watch others do so. In fact, even reading this and seeing the word in print, you may be feeling one coming on…
I’ve long found it fascinating that yawns are so contagious. That’s why I was excited when I saw the headline for this article: “Why Is Yawning Contagious?”
But the article itself turned out to be a big yawn. The psychologist authors of the study involved don’t know; they speculate that it’s a form of empathetic response, similar to laughter.
Well, I can speculate too, and I agree, but so what? Unfortunately, no one knows why yawning, of all things, should be shared, or by what mechanism this happens.
I thought “catching” a yawn was related to mirror neurons, the stuff that makes us mimic others.
The cover of that book made me yawn.
petitedov: Do you have a link to an article about that? Sounds interesting.
I’d just like to say…… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
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“viewing someone yawn evokes unique neural activity in the posterior cingulate and precuneus…..”
and…..Zzzzzzzzzzzzz
I will try to find it! I believe there was a book that came out last year that dealt exactly with this phenomena.
Here’s the book I was referring to. I haven’t read it, but I want to.
I found this article that talks about yawning and mirror neurons. It seems to suggest that when you yawn you bypass the mirror neurons – so I guess I’m totally off base…
BTW silly side note about yawning, when my boyfriend and I first started dating we would have this really silly game where he would make yawn and I would try to resist. It was really, really hard!
Must. Not. Yawn.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
How funny. I just pulled out my lp recording of this book last night, read by the wonderful Marvin Miller in the early ’60’s. Don’t know about yawns, but that record for me is very soothing at bedtime. Definitely helped in adding my name to the who’s asleep score.
I always thought it was to synchronize the group for the purpose of sleeping. I can see how it would be a competitive advantage for a group to solve the issue.
my sisters pointer is double jointed, so she would annoy me with it on long car trips when we were really young and such a thing could annoy you. i can yawn at will (or not) and i would give her a yawning fit in return.
and its not just seeing a yawn, reading or talking about it does it too.
its not to refresh air, and truly no one has a clear reason why we do it.
[there are also neat facts and things about tickling another quirky thing we have]
Try mutual boredom….
Oh, this does work. My budding young scientist self used to exaggerate a yawn while an altar boy, with 200 or so subjects, back in 1968. I’d always catch 3 or 4 empaths.
I can sometimes make my dog yawn by yawning at her. Hilarious.