Contagious yawning

Dr. Robert Provine, a psychobiologist who has devoted a lot of time to the phenomenon of yawning, works at the University of Maryland in the USA. He defines the act of yawning as successive processes: wide opening of the mouth, deep and prolonged inhalation and exhalation.

There is an opinion among scientists that the purpose of yawning is to saturate the blood with oxygen as much as possible. Provine does not agree with this position. He conducted an experiment during which the subjects' mouths were securely sealed. The main condition of the experiment was free nasal breathing to ensure normal oxygen saturation of the blood. As a result, it was possible to yawn, but the subjects felt dissatisfied after yawning.

This observation led the scientist to conclude that the act of yawning has nothing to do with breathing and blood oxygenation. Even giving pure oxygen did not increase the effectiveness of yawning with your mouth closed.

Provine's research also touched on boredom. It turned out that while watching a recording of a rock concert, people yawned less often than when taking a boring test. What was the reason for yawning: boredom or physiology?

Provine asked his students to record episodes of yawning in their diaries and came to interesting conclusions. Most often, people yawned for a short period of time before going to bed and for some time after waking up. There was also a clear connection between the process of yawning and stretching. Moreover, stretching in most cases causes yawning, but yawning does not always provoke stretching.

Similar processes are characteristic of animals. Not only mammals and birds yawn, but even fish! After 11 weeks of intrauterine development, even the fetus in the womb yawns.

The contagiousness of yawning begins to manifest itself in humans from about the age of 2. Scientists refer to this process as a kind of "stereotypical activity." But why is all this necessary?

This issue is still far from being definitively resolved. Apparently, yawning and stretching are components of the same reflex. In the course of research, it turned out that about 55% of the subjects began to yawn at the sight of a person yawning for 5 minutes. Nothing like this happened with another group of subjects who were shown a video with a man smiling 30 times. Blind subjects also started yawning when listening to an audio recording of a yawning person. Even the people who read the articles about yawning yawned. Most of us, when we hear about yawning, start yawning ourselves.

Provine concluded that there is some kind of neurological innate mechanism of yawning. After all, the act of yawning affects a whole group of people. Maybe it's an evolutionary mechanism. It is even possible that in primitive society, yawning was a signal in the tribe that it was time to sleep. So, the process of yawning and its contagiousness remains an open question, fraught with many more mysteries. 1xbet Casino - New players can get a welcome bonus of up to €1500 + 150 Free Spins at 1xbet Casino, and by using the promo code for 1xbet for registration of account, users will enjoy access to many other daily and weekly offers like day specific deposit bonuses or casino tournaments. The casino at 1Xbet is split into Slots and Live Casino sections. The slots area features a multitude of games gathered from over 45 software providers like Microgaming, Nextgen Gaming, Rival, Quickspin, Evoplay just to name a few.