{"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\/2017\/09\/why-yawning-is-so-countagious\/","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