Why do we yawn when we see others yawn nearby?

Question

isnt that weird?

Answer 1

You should watch "Mythbusters" on Discovery channel. They did their own controlled study all about whether yawning was contagious! From their results, they decided that yawning isn't 'contagious' although they did admit that they may have needed to study a larger group of people!

Answer 2

This is from http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/yawning.html


It is possible that yawns are contagious because at one time in evolutionary history, the yawn served to coordinate the social behavior of a group of animals. When one member of the group yawned to signal an event, all the other members of the group also yawned. Yawns may still be contagious these days because of a leftover response (a "vestigial" response) that is not used anymore. None of this has been proven true and yawns are still one of the mysteries of the mind.

Answer 3

It may not be one of life’s deepest mysteries, but as scientific conundrums go, it has a peculiar staying power. Why is yawning contagious?

Researchers recently found that yawning isn’t only catching among people; it is also among chimpanzees. No one has devised a fully convincing explanation of why.

Compounding the mystery is the odd way in which the contagious power of yawning is largely unconscious. We can see someone yawn, yearn to replicate the action ourselves, and do it, all without thinking about it. Other times we’re aware it is happening, though it still floats somewhere beneath the realm of reason and of purposeful actions.

So what gives? In an effort to find the answer, the Finnish government recently funded a brain scanning study. The results turned up some hard-to-interpret, possible clues. It also confirmed the obvious: yawn contagion is largely unconscious. Wherever it might affect the brain, it bypasses the known brain circuitry for consciously analyzing and mimicking other people’s actions.

This circuitry is called the “mirror-neuron system,” because it contains a special type of brain cells, or neurons, that become active both when their owner does something, and when he or she senses someone else doing the same thing.

Mirror neurons typically become active when a person consciously imitates an action of someone else, a process associated with learning. But they seem to play no role in yawn contagiousness, the researchers in the new study found. The cells are have no extra activity during contagious yawning compared with during other non-contagious facial movements, they observed.

Brain activity “associated with viewing another person yawn seems to circumvent the essential parts of the MNS [mirror neuron system], in line with the nature of contagious yawns as automatically released behavioural acts—rather than truly imitated motor patterns that would require detailed action understanding,” wrote the researchers, with the Helsinki University of Technology and the Research Centre Jülich, Germany. The findings are published in the February issue of the research journal Neuroimage.

But if seeing someone yawn doesn’t activate these centers, what does it do to the brain? The researchers found that it appears to strongly activate at least one brain area, called the superior temporal sulcus. But this activation was unrelated to any desire to yawn in response, so it may be irrelevant to the contagion question, the researchers added.

Possibly more significant, they wrote, was the apparent deactivation of a second brain area, called the left periamygdalar region. The more strongly a participant reported wanting to yawn in response to another person’s yawn, the stronger was this deactivation.

“This finding represents the first known neurophysiological signature of perceived yawn contagiousness,” the researchers wrote.

Exactly what the finding means is less clear, they acknowledged. The periamygdalar region is a zone that lies alongside the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain in the area of the side of the head. The periamygdalar region has been linked to the unconscious analysis of emotional expressions in faces. Why it would be deactivated in tandem with yawn contagion is unclear, the researchers said.

One thing seems clear from the study is that “contagious yawning does not rely on brain mechanisms of action understanding,” wrote one of the researchers, Riitta Hari of the Helsinki University of Technology, in a recent email. Rather, she continued, it seems to be an “‘automatically’ released (and most likely very archaic) motor pattern,” or sequence of physical actions.
In the study, volunteers looked at videos of actors yawning or making other mouth movements. Meanwhile their brains were scanned using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a system that shows the amount of activity or work going on in various brain areas based on the amount of oxygen being used up there. The volunteers were later asked how strongly they had been tempted to yawn while viewing the pictures.

Apart from the physical brain mechanisms of yawn contagiousness, researchers have offered different reasons as to why it exists. Some have proposed that in early humans, yawn contagiousness might have helped people communicate their alertness levels to each other, and thus coordinate their sleep schedules.

This might be part of a more general phenomenon of unconscious signals that serve to synchronize group behavior, the authors of the Neuroimage paper wrote. “Such synchronization could be essential for species survival and works without action understanding, like when a flock of birds rises to the air as soon as the first bird does so—supposably as it notices a predator.”

Answer 4

One reasoning I've heard, but nothings ever been proven, is that we do it for the same reasons animals do it. Some say that prior to humans ability to use speech, yawning was a sign that it was time for bed. Mammals that live in packs will all yawn prior to going to bed. Because they live in packs or herds or whatever, they keep on the same sleeping schedule, so yawing is supposed to be there sign for, everyone go to bed. It's been said that humans used to do this before we had the ability to speak. Contagious possibly to influence others into the same idea. One yawns, someone else yawns and everyone else yawns, and off to bed they went.

That's just one theory I heard though.

Answer 5

Pandiculation is the act of stretching and yawning
-Everyone yawns - babies, kids, teenagers, adults.
-Some birds, reptiles and most mammals also yawn.

Here are a few things that are known about yawns:
1.The average duration of a yawn is about 6 seconds.
2.In humans, the earliest occurrence of a yawn happens at about 11 weeks after conception - that's BEFORE the baby is born!
3.Yawns become contagious to people between the first and second years of life.
4.A part of the brain that plays an important role in yawning is the hypothalamus (Part of the forebrain that regulates the amount of fear, thirst, sexual drive and aggression we feel).
-Research has shown that some neurotransmitters (for example, dopamine, excitatory amino acids, nitric oxide) and neuropeptides increase yawning if injected in the hypothalamus of animals

But WHY do we yawn?
-You know that when we are bored, we yawn.
-Scientists have confirmed this observation by comparing the number of yawns in 17-19 year old students who watched music videos to the number of yawns in students who watched an uninteresting color test bar pattern.
-As you might have expected, people who watched the color test bar pattern yawned more (5.78 yawns in 30 minutes) than those who watched the "MTV-like" video (3.41 yawns in 30 minutes.)
-The average duration of yawns was also slightly longer in the test bar viewing group.
-One unexpected finding was that yawns in male students had a longer duration than those in female students

But WHY do we yawn when we’re bored?
-Many people assume that we yawn because our bodies are trying to get rid of extra carbon dioxide (CO2) and to take in more oxygen (O2).
-According to this theory, when people are bored or tired, they breathe more slowly.
-As breathing slows down, less oxygen makes it to the lungs.
-As carbon dioxide builds up in the blood, a message to the brain results in signals back to the lungs saying, "Take a deep breath," and a yawn is produced.
-The only problem with the excess CO2 theory is that research shows that it may not be true.
-In 1987, Dr. Robert Provine and his coworkers set up an experiment to test the theory that high CO2/low O2 blood content causes yawning.
-Air is normally made up of 20.95% O2, 79.02% N2 (nitrogen), 0.03% CO2 (and a few other gases in low concentrations).
-The researchers gave college students the following gases to breathe for 30 minutes:
Gas #1 100% O2
Gas #2 3% CO2, 21% O2
Gas #3 5% CO2, 21% O2
Gas #4 Normal Air
-Breathing 100% O2 (Gas #1) or either CO2 gas (Gas #2 and #3) did cause the students to breathe at a faster rate.
-However, neither CO2 gas nor 100% O2 caused the students to yawn more.
-These gases also did not change the duration of yawns when they occurred.

The researchers also looked for a relationship between breathing and yawning by having people exercise.
-Exercise, obviously, causes people to breathe faster.
-However, the number of yawns during exercise was not different from the number of yawns before or after exercise.
-Therefore, it appears that yawning is not due to CO2/O2 levels in the blood and that yawning and breathing are controlled by different mechanisms.


So, the question remains - why do we yawn?
-Dr. Provine suggests that perhaps yawning is like stretching.
-Yawning and stretching increase blood pressure and heart rate and also flex muscles and joints.
-Evidence that yawning and stretching may be related comes from the observation that if you try to stifle or prevent a yawn by clenching your jaws shut, the yawn is somewhat "unsatisfying."
-For some reason, the stretching of jaw and face muscles is necessary for a good yawn.

It is possible that yawns are contagious because at one time in evolutionary history, the yawn served to coordinate the social behavior of a group of animals.
-When one member of the group yawned to signal an event, all the other members of the group also yawned.
-Yawns may still be contagious these days because of a leftover response (a "vestigial" response) that is not used anymore.

Answer 6

Cause yawning is contagious.

Answer 7

What you should really be asking is why I yawned when I read this.

I'm serious.

Answer 8

As it happens, this turns out to be a very interesting question.

Check out: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6988155.stm

And this has a bit about it being contagious in monkeys too:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6270036.stm

Answer 9

"Monkey see- Monkey do" syndrome!