{"id":350133,"date":"2017-09-02T10:49:03","date_gmt":"2017-09-02T10:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=350133"},"modified":"2017-11-10T12:33:45","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T12:33:45","slug":"why-yawning-is-so-countagious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=350133","title":{"rendered":"Why yawning is so countagious"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may well be yawning just reading this – it’s contagious. Now researchers have looked at what happens in our brains to trigger that response.<\/p>\n

A University of Nottingham team found it occurs in a part of the brain responsible for motor function.<\/p>\n

The primary motor cortex also plays a part in conditions such as Tourette’s syndrome.<\/p>\n

So the scientists say understanding contagious yawning could also help understand those disorders too.<\/p>\n

Contagious yawning is a common form of echophenomena – the automatic imitation of someone else’s words or actions.<\/p>\n

Echophenomena is also seen in Tourette’s, as well as in other conditions, including epilepsy and autism.<\/p>\n

To test what’s happening in the brain during the phenomenon, scientists monitored 36 volunteers while they watched others yawning.<\/p>\n

‘Excitability’<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the study, published in the journal Current Biology, some were told it was fine to yawn while others were told to stifle the urge.<\/p>\n

The urge to yawn was down to how each person’s primary motor cortex worked – its “excitability”.<\/p>\n

And, using external transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), it was also possible to increase “excitability” in the motor cortex and therefore people’s propensity for contagious yawns.<\/p>\n

\"Dr<\/span><\/figure>\n

Georgina Jackson, professor of cognitive neuropsychology who worked on the study, said the finding could have wider uses: “In Tourette’s, if we could reduce the excitability we might reduce the tics, and that’s what we are working on.”<\/p>\n

Prof Stephen Jackson, who also worked on the research, added: “If we can understand how alterations in cortical excitability give rise to neural disorders we can potentially reverse them.<\/p>\n

“We are looking for potential non-drug, personalised treatments, using TMS that might be effective in modulating imbalances in the brain networks.”<\/p>\n

Dr Andrew Gallup, a psychologist at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, who has carried out research into the connection between empathy and yawning, said using TMS was a “novel approach” to the study of contagious yawning.<\/p>\n

He added: “We still know relatively little about why we yawn. Various studies have proposed links between contagious yawning and empathy, yet the research supporting this connection is mixed and inconsistent.<\/p>\n

“The current findings provide further evidence that yawn contagion may be unrelated to empathic processing.”<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may well be yawning just reading this – it’s contagious. Now researchers have looked at what happens in our brains to trigger that response. A University of Nottingham team found it occurs in a part of the brain responsible for motor function. The primary motor cortex also plays a part in conditions such as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1565],"tags":[3,10758],"class_list":["post-350133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-lifestyle","tag-ghana-news","tag-yawning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=350133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=350133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=350133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=350133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}