Researchers Found Another Reason Why Yawns Are Contagious

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Yawning is baffling. Although there are theories, we don’t understand why we do it and most people wonder why the heck they are so contagious. One thing we have already learned about yawning is that the contagiousness of the act is linked with our ability to emphasize. 

For example, as Dr. Jennifer Goldbeck revealed in her article "Why Psychopaths Are Immune to Contagious Yawning"  with Psychology Today, research has found that Psychopaths are immune to yawning because they lack empathy. 

Empathy is the ability to see things from another persons point of view or to be able to share and experience another persons feelings.

"Researchers at Baylor University had 135 subjects take the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R) and then exposed them to a contagious yawn experiment." Goldbeck said. "The Coldheartedness part of the psychopathy scale was strongly tied to whether the person yawned. The more coldhearted a person was (i.e., the less empathetic), the less likely they were to catch a yawn."

Empathy is essential for caring about people, having a conscience, and is apparently one of the core psychological factors that leads to contagious yawning. But since the study in 2015 even more has come to light on other parts of the brain that effect the contagiousness of yawning. 

If anyone has wondered why holding back a yawn is nearly impossible, researchers at the University of Nottingham, according to Health Day News, have found the answer.

It turns out that the brain's primary motor cortex also plays a role in contagious yawning, something researchers realized they could use to better understand clinical conditions such as Tourette syndrome and epilepsy which are also effected by the primary motor cortex.  

The primary motor cortex  is one of the principal brain areas involved in motor function as it generates the neural impulses that control the execution of movement.

At the University of Nottingham researchers “examined 36 adults as they looked at video clips of people yawning. The participants were told to either try to stop themselves from yawning or just let it happen. The researchers found that it's hard to resist yawning when you see someone yawn, and the urge to yawn gets stronger when you're told not to do it,” said Health Day News in their article "New Clues to Why Yawns Are Contagious."

When the researchers tried to manipulate contagious yawning through electrical stimulation they found the brain's primary motor cortex played a role in contagious yawning. Something researchers realized would be important in further understanding motor excitability in clinical conditions “such as epilepsy, dementia, autism and Tourette syndrome," said study leader Stephen Jackson the professor of cognitive neuroscience at Nottingham in interview with Health Day News.

"This research has shown that the 'urge' (to yawn) is increased by trying to stop yourself. Using electrical stimulation, we were able to increase excitability and in doing so increase the propensity for contagious yawning," said Georgina Jackson, a professor of cognitive neuropsychology.

Tourette’s syndrome causes tics which are involuntary, repetitive movements and vocalizations. Similarly to contagious yawning, when people with Tourette’s try and hold back a tick, the urge is increased.

Also like with yawning, in her article "6 Things That Make Me Tick" blogger Brittany Fichter, who has Tourette's, reveals that watching others tic makes her ticks even worse. For her tics can be contagious just like yawning. 

" I feel like a jerk sometimes, but I can’t watch those Youtube videos people post where they explain Tourettes to the world. I mean, kudos to them for being so brave and trying to break stereotypes! I can’t watch them, however, because they make me want to start ticcing, and the last thing I need is to “catch” new tics.”

With this new information, researchers hope to learn how to reduce excitability in the motor complex and then reduce tics in Tourette’s.