Unveiling of the secret of contagious yawning

According to RCO News AgencySeeing or listening to yawning someone can make you yawning. This phenomenon is not limited to humans, and some animals experience “contagious yawning”.

“Brain cells called Mirror Neurons may be involved in contagious yawning,” said Dr. Charles Sweet, a psychiatrist and medical consultant at Linear Health. Mirror neurons react to what we see in others.

“Mirror neurons” are neurons that are stimulated and performed when the animal observes an act performed by another. Thus, these neurons like mirrors mimic other behaviors.

“When you see someone yawning, these neurons are activated,” the suite said.

This neural mechanism may explain why yawning can easily spread to social groups.

The research has also shown that people are more likely to see yawning in the face of acquaintances and strangers.

Andrew Gallup, a professor of behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins University, said: “This model, called” Cognitive Bias “, is probably due to” Attentional Bias “.

His reason is that people naturally pay more attention to people within their social circles.

“Cognitive bias” refers to a set of behavioral and cognitive patterns that affect individual perception, judgment, and decision making.

“Bias in attention” is a type of “cognitive bias” that involuntarily paying special attention to a particular stimulus or a sensory sign.

“One hypothesis is that the contagious yawning has evolved to increase the detection of threats in groups,” Gallup said.

Gallup and his colleagues in a study in Year 2 found that yawning helps to cool the brain. Gallup put forward the assumption that this cooling effect may improve mental processing and efficiency.

The team said that if yawning spreads into a group, it could help increase the group’s awareness to identify the threat.

Newer Gallup research on humans has shown that seeing others can only improve one’s ability to detect threats, which further confirms the hypothesis that people increase the level of consciousness in a group through contagious yawning.

Another hypothesis is that the contagious yawning to keep the groups has evolved. The yawns follow a natural “Circadian Rhythm” and often indicate the transfer between activities.

“Therefore, when yawning spreads into a group, it may help to coordinate the patterns of activity and behaviorals,” Gallup continued.

This hypothesis is from a new study on African wild lions. The researchers observed the yawns of milk in two social groups and tracked the relationship between yawning spread and the same changes in individual behavior. Their results were noticeable.

The milk that had seen another yawning was more likely to mimic the milk movements that had first yawned.

Not everyone is prone to contagious yawning. In controlled studies, approximately 2 to 5 percent of the volunteers yawned in response to the yawning of another person.

One key question in research is whether contagious yawning is related to empathy?

There have been numerous studies, but the findings have been inconsistent. “Some studies have found anticipated communication, while others do not show such communication,” says Gallup.

“Although our initial research showed that children with autism were less contagious than those of non -autism, but in a previous study we found that when participants were explicitly ordered to focus on yawning stimulants, the difference disappeared,” he said.

He emphasized that attention also plays a key role in the spread of yawning.

One of the constant findings is the negative relationship between contagious yawning and “psychopathy”. “People who earn a higher privilege in measuring the symptoms of psychosis are less prone to contagious yawning,” says Gallup.

“Psychological” personality disorder has symptoms such as selfishness, psychological manipulation of individuals, and cruelty.

“In the end, the contagious yawning is less related to fatigue and is more related to people’s communication,” says the suite. This is the quiet method of your brain to keep up with people around you.

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