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twoshots
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27 Apr 2008, 7:24 pm

D1nk0 wrote:
twoshots wrote:
Quote:
Abstract

Yawning is contagious: Watching another person yawn may trigger us to do the same. Here we studied brain activation with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while subjects watched videotaped yawns. Significant increases in the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal, specific to yawn viewing as contrasted to viewing non-nameable mouth movements, were observed in the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) and bilaterally in the anterior STS, in agreement with the high affinity of STS to social cues. However, no additional yawn-specific activation was observed in Broca's area, the core region of the human mirror-neuron system (MNS) that matches action observation and execution. Thus, activation associated with viewing another person yawn seems to circumvent the essential parts of the MNS, 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. The subjects' self-reported tendency to yawn covaried negatively with activation of the left periamygdalar region, suggesting a connection between yawn contagiousness and amygdalar activation.


"Yearning to Yawn", NeuroImage, Volume 24, Issue 4, 15 February 2005, Pages 1260-1264, obtained through Science Direct

Emphasis added



What is your profession?


Is that relevant? :P

I mean, I'm not actually sure which part of my original post you were questioning. I covered at least in that abstract that yawning was contagious (which seemed to contradict your original thesis). I grabbed the first article I saw which supported that, and highlighted the information on Brocas area due to the fact that it being "the core region of the human mirror-neuron system" caught my eye because I remembered that mirror neurons are related to empathy; furthermore (at least according to wikipedia...) Brocas area is located in the inferior frontal gyrus which (also according to wikipedia) shows less activity in people with HFA, and hence it related to the idea that empathy was not necessarily relevant in the "social yawn".

That gets me strong evidence for my first point (I mean, I think NeuroImage is a peer reviewed journal and on top of that the communicability for social yawning was mentioned without citation indicating common knowledge; I've heard of it elsewhere, too) and a wee bit of support for my guess.

As for the speculation as to the function of the "social yawn", I mentioned pretty clearly that I wasn't giving it much credence...


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