How many times has it happened to you? You see someone yawn and next thing you know you’re doing it, too. Now, apparently, simply hearing someone yawn may be enough for you to start.
Referred to as ‘contagious yawning,’ a recent study by University of Western Ontario psychology professor
Mel Goodale – along with Stephen Arnott and Anthony Singhal – shows that our brain becomes increasingly active with the imitating behaviour of yawning.
Their paper, published in the September 2009 issue of Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, states that despite a widespread familiarity with the often compelling urge to yawn after perceiving someone else yawn, understanding of the neural mechanism underlying contagious yawning remained incomplete.
“We’re not the first to do a study surrounding contagious yawning,” says Goodale,
director of the Centre for Brain and Mind at Western . “What is new is the area in the brain and the activity during this action.”
With the help of a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner, investigators were able to measure changes in blood flow to particular areas of the brain. While lying in the machine, listeners used a four-point scale to indicate how much they felt like yawning following the presentation of a yawn, breath, or scrambled yawn sound.
Goodale says not only were yawn sounds given significantly higher ratings, but enhanced activity in the right frontal lobe – an area believed to contain the mirror neuron network – was recorded in response to hearing the yawning sound.
He believes the same activity in the brain would be seen with a similar study involving visual stimulants.
So if you find yourself getting a strong urge to yawn because you see or hear someone else yawning, you now know it’s not just a coincidence, but that science is on your side.
“There is definitely something behind this,” says Goodale.