Physiological Process of the Mysterious Yawn Revealed

Physiological Process of the Mysterious Yawn Revealed

www.princeton.edu

Though considered a mark of boredom or fatigue, yawning might also be a trait of the hot-headed. Literally.

A study led by Andrew Gallup, a postdoctoral research associate in Princeton University's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, is the first involving humans to show that yawning frequency varies with the season and that people are less likely to yawn when the heat outdoors exceeds body temperature. Gallup and his co-author Omar Eldakar, a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Arizona's Center for Insect Science, report this month in the journal Frontiers in Evolutionar

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.huffingtonpost.com
www.ibtimes.com
www.digitaljournal.com
www.myfoxtwincities.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Yawning: An Ironic Way to Beat The Powers That Be??
Man sent to jail for yawning

The process of yawning has always been a curious mystery to myself after stumbling across a website about schizophrenia years ago, in which a man posted a very detailed theory about what he believed this process of yawning to be, and wrote pages and pages in great detail to back his hypothesis up with scientific data, physiological process that actuate the need for yawning, and essentially he said that through a process of mandibular hydraulics (paraphrasing from an 11 year old memory from 2000) that yawns activated a process in which the jaws were used to essentially build a hydraulic pressure in which cerebral spinal fluid was pushed up, and into the cranial cavity, and meant to bath the brain in a needed uptake of csf, and the rest of the submission had too much medical and scientific jargon for me to process, and I didn't really take note of it as being important, until someone dismissed him (apparently he was schizophrenic, but his post was organized, cohesive, and well stated) and told him "you need to go into mathematics." I thought this was odd, as it was in a condescending and arrogant tone, but the person replied without dismissing his claim. I remember the person who replied to this guys explanation on the yawn sporting the handle "Agent Smith." (The Movie, "The Matrix" had just been released a year earlier) Years went by, but I took note of the mass belief by everyone that yawning meant "you needed more oxygen," which didn't set with me, because when a person needs more oxygen, they just take a deeper, or bigger breath, no need for the extra mandibular movement, and muscle triggering in the region, and it also didn't explain why the yawn was contagious to the point it was transferable not only from human to human, but just from reading about a yawn. (I swear I feel one coming on now, lol) Not only is the yawn contagious from people, but other animals, even rodents yawning can trigger a human to yawn (if seen yawning). I thought it was quite weird, that we can send men to the moon, split atoms, sequence organisms genomes, create anti-matter, see the furthest reaches of our galaxies, design A.I. systems that mimic human intelligence, and make hybrid animals using human d.n.a. yet, for some "mysterious" reason, no one was able to give one unique piece of peer reviewed, scientifically published, actual data concerning it. This is when the conspiracy alert system for my brain went on broadcast. I never thought it to be so important to actually heavily research it, I'm not a doctor, or scientist, but I did some searching on the internet, even as recent as two weeks ago for it, and came to a dead end. I even went to a neuroscience for kids website hosted by the U.S. Government and it too, stated that it was a mystery, and as well, debunked the old wive's tales about the cause being a need for oxygen to the brain. Well, I recently (a day or two ago) found this article on a twitter feed, and looked into it. I read the article, which didn't reveal too much, as you can see, even the Princeton article doesn't reveal much, other than it relates to cooling the head, so I decided to email the Doctor who did the study, and ask him why there was such little data in the article, and why he didn't address the well known fact of it's ability to be somewhat infectious, even trans-species contagious, as well as why he didn't publish the physiological breakdown of the process in how the head was heated through yawning, and only provided a very rudimentary graph showing yawn frequency throughout seasonal temperatures. I also told him of my encounter with the forum article authored years ago, and within the day, Dr. Gallup sent me an email, no message in the body, but: "see attached," in which were two .pdf files attached to the message. I will see how I will be able to upload these two files for ATS review and education of this, and see what some of you have to say about it. I've been pretty busy for the past two days, so I haven't even reviewed the .pdf files myself, but I will be disappointed if I don't see something as to the physiological, and psychosocial reason for it's contagious properties....yawn.....YAWN.....ahhhhh......yawn.

Are you yawning yet?

www.princeton.edu
(visit the link for the full news article)

link to neuroscience for kids about the "..yawn..."http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/yawning.html


.pdf files 11 pages in archived .zip format: reyawning.zip

Okay, I thought it was going to take me a while to read, this after all was the marrow of the research, but it reads like a highschool science project. WOW! This is NOT what I thought it was going to say after reading what I read 11 years ago. I am THOROUGHLY disappointed in this Ph.D's hackneyed, one sentence hypothesis as to the reason for the purported contagious properties of the STILL mysterious yawn. I'm kinda embarrased to even post this now, I thought I'd get some real meat out of a very scientific reason, if only a well constructed hypothesis and scientific process to shed light, but at this time, I'm going to chalk this up as a guy who asked for grant money to do his project, and came up with what amounts, in my opinion, to bovine produce fertilizer, and believable to to the easily fooled. Enjoy this "farce." Dr. Gallup is going to get a pretty critical email from me tomorrow as I tear his hypothesis apart for lack of proper scientific method application in his so called "research."

Meh.

Almost, but I focused on typing my reply and the urge went away

I always wondered what caused one person to see someone yawn, and then they did...

okay thinking about it again...time to refocus my attention

reply to post by 2PLUS2IS22


2! Edit your post, please! Put some spaces in there.

My eyes...they burn!

Other than that. Interesting post.

No joke, I yawned three times while reading that, then started to laugh. I did just wake up so maybe my mind needs some heat to digest all of it. Nice find.

reply to post by 2PLUS2IS22


You know, I have to agree with the fact that for all our technological advances, we don't know ourselves all that well. It's as if we're advancing in the wrong direction. Good post.

reply to post by 2PLUS2IS22


Yawned twice whilst reading your post, have not yawned all damned day..

Point in case, could be the most contagious thing known to man.

Always wondered why I yawned for no reason.

yawned twice just reading this, human minds a weird place.

Straight from the .pdf files: (last page)

According to our hypothesis, rather than promoting sleep, yawning should antagonize sleep. It has been widely believed that yawning in the presence of other is disrespectful and a sign of boredom (e.g., witness the fact that many people cover their mouths when they yawn). However, according to our account yawning more accurately reflects a mechanism that maintains atttention. Likewise, when someone yawns in a group setting as evidence for diminished mental processing efficiency, contagious yawning may have evolved to promote the maintenance of the vigilance.

Really? this is all they have to say about explaining the tran-species contagion effect of yawning? I've yawned from watching a RODENT (a gopher I think it was) on television.

So, this Doctor at PRINCETON is actually publishing this a a scientific breakthrough hypothesis, and using terms and phrases in his paper like "widely believed is disrepectful?" Who cares about manners, we're talking science! That's what I call filler junk.

I just did a search, to find a picture of an animal yawning to post to see it's affect on you the viewer, and then refer to the pdf (if you're a good reader, it will take about 3 minutes to read AND process, if you are a slow reader, maybe ten minutes, but processing is instant for even someone without the greatest reading comprehension as it reads as if written for the average high school student.

I found this odd site, no real reason someone would blog this, but I'm a conspiracy minded kinda guy, I wanna know things, especially why we don't know what I believe we should know, l like I think we should know why flames are hot, before we know how to put a microprocessor on a piece of silicon. If we were able to put a microprocessor on a piece of silicon, but "claimed" that heat were a mystery (simple investigation would reveal the nature of thermodynamics, and pain receptors in the brain, and nervous system stimulus delivery), I'd kinda think maybe something was a bit wrong with science.

Hiding something? Maybe. Why? Good question. It's just a simple....zzzzZZZzzzz....yawn.

no, this isn't my blog, i don't promote it, the info on it is kinda useless other than it came up in a search for "rodent's yawning:

malhaar.blogspot.com...

the above blog links to this site of pictures of various animals yawning

www.gapingmaws.com...

alway thought it your barin trying to wake you up lol

*yawns* now if only they could figure out a hiccup

I think I jumped the gun on the article headline. Even though this is from a Princeton researcher with a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology, by all rights, if a mod should review it, technically it does not meet the criteria of a hoax, but move it to the skunkworks, hoax bin, whatever if you choose.


I apologize, and should have read the .pdf files before I entitled the thread, but hey, it's got mainstream media, princeton.edu, and other data supporting the claim of a mystery revealed through the scientific process, but I think the ATS thread on the Enigma-amginE game has more scientific method than this doctorate's drivel.

My apologies, and please, use critical thinking when evaluating this Dr.'s analytical interpretation on his high school science project's undoubtedly rushed, and dubiously misguided effort as misleading his audience into believing it's all in his notes.

GARBAGE!

I read your post all the way through without stopping to yawn once... until I just typed that!!!!! & IM NOT LIENG!

LOL

Your post was charming to read by the way thank you
In Nepal there is a meditator who has spent the last 6 years under a bodhi tree meditating, his name is Sambodhi Dharma Sangha.. he has gained a very strong base of devotees & when speaking with some of his international devotees who have visited Nepal to be blessed by him personally they told me that lots of times he is confronted with devotees who carry very negative & sometimes quite poisonous auras but is is happy because he takes on their suffering and blesses them helping to reduce their negative energies... Anyway an interesting way he does this is apparently by yawning for 30 minutes!!!!! in order to purify the energies he just picked up

when you wrote about the schizophrenic guy posting about it I couldn't believe how spot on it sounded.. there is spiritual concept called the Kundalini Shakti, which is awakened through various yoga purification practises , the result being that the sexual organs (in men) are retracted a little way back into he body filling the spine with very powerful fluids & hormones not typically found in the average human spine resulting in the awakening of very profound sensations through the spine & brain causing near constant peak performance states to be experienced due to the abundance of energy this awakening gives... needless to say your friend was definitely on to something & Agent Smith (lol) could have been what you suspected given the suppression of this information & the general conspiracy to enslave human consciousness... Good thread

reply to post by camouflaged


I own a book by Neil Shubin called 'Your Inner Fish' which covers this quite in-depth. Long story short it's to do with the amphibian evolution of going from gills to lungs (as in developing tadpoles for instance).

How much of this is still deemed accurate today I'm unsure, but some info for you none the less if you want to chase that up

reply to post by EmeraldGreen



enjoyed reading your response, not only did I yawn more than twice as I am now. (weird) but I kinda giggled, picturing this shaman under a tree with a 30 minute yawn on his face.

Your explanation regarding the kundalini hit home, sometimes I have more faith in these less explored, and considered metaphysical aspect of humans than our current medical and scientific ones; I mean, what else do
we have to resort to if science hasn't the answers.

You don't call all the people in churches, synagogues, and temples crazy because they are seeking something
science can't explain (causality without cause, i.e. big bang/crunch cycle from nothing becoming something, then magically assembling itself to make other stuff that made stuff for no good reason on accident)

I'm not trying to bring religion into this at all, just using it to make a point on the point you made.

It's so simple, it's so innocuous, it's a simple...................yawn. lol (did you yawn? I did!)

reply to post by ShiningBeneath


Thank you for your information, I looked his book up on amazon, I think I can get a hold of it, it's it's gone to e-book form, and I'll see what I can dig up, but even if he goes into depth on yawning, and compares it to evolution, and what not, I am (even before I read it) doubting it will explain the contagious nature of yawning, and how it applies to biological systems and the transmission of it.

It seriously seems to be the most contagious, easily induced thing a human can "catch," or be induced to have.

.......yawn..................................................................y....ahhhhhhhhn. yawn. lol.

reply to post by EmeraldGreen


Talk about enslaving the human spirit is interesting to me, as I've had some experiences under trance, that when I got out of them, could "remember" having almost superhuman abilities, but the abilities weren't really super human, they were more like hyper-animal if that makes sense. What I'm trying to say I guess is the enslavement it would seem, is a domesticated homo sapien. If not for years of mental indoctrination through eons of the controlling lords of humanity, the designers of our fate of belief, then maybe we would all have these superhuman like abilities, to have the intelligence of the modern man, yet the skills, abilities of a primitive animal, like super hearing, super sight, super smelling, etc. The brain is the control processor for these senses, it's not that we aren't equipped with the right sensors, or sensing organs, it's that the brain is not able to utilize features of it's own wiring, by domesticated design from the designers of "civilization," for the human's best interest. It's as if the power of the human brain is put on lock down.

I guess it's not good for business to have too many superhumans walking the earth. A superhuman, isn't always a good human, and I probably, if were thinking in that department and were one of the leaders of early civilization, I think I would "breed" out some of those traits for mine, and my own family's good as well, but I do agree with the notion, that there is some sort of mental slavery, and control of the potential of the mind that's been happening for quite a while.

I've read of sufi's, maharashis, and yogis demonstrating amazing abilities and control over their bodies by training their brain.

We all can do this, and maybe we were born able to do this, but society, belief systems, and developmental emotional domestication systems have cloaked this from our own being, replacing it with the artificial self, or as Freud and many others called it, the "ego."

people yawn because the brain isnt getting enough oxygen

no mystery there

Lol op, a hilarious subject.
But I tend to yawn a lot in the discos that is hardly from boredom, to
the point of teardrops lol.