What happens in the brain when you yawn

He yawn It’s something so common, so common in everyone’s daily life, that it’s surprising to know that to some extent it’s still a mystery to science, like why it’s so contagious. What happens in the brain when we yawn?

The classical definition determines it as the “uncontrolled action of opening the mouthwith a very wide separation of the jaws, to perform a deep inhalation followed by an exhalation slightly less than what was inhaled, with definitive closing of the mouth.

Yawning is a innate behavior, which does not require prior knowledge and its nature is captivating because there are many theories that try to explain it, which are the result of various research developed in this regard. An interesting fact is that all vertebrate animals yawn, and in some species, it is more common in males than females.

And although scientists have proposed several causes why we yawn, no one has been able to completely resolve the doubt. Some link it to tiredness, boredom or stress; while others explain it with the lack of oxygen in the brain.

What happens in the brain when we yawn?

What is certain is that, regardless of why we yawn, when this happens in the body it produces a certain measurable and explainable effect. For example, when you yawn facial muscles are stretchedyou tilt your head back, you close or half-close your eyes, you tear, the Eustachian tubes of the middle ear open and you perform many other, albeit imprecise, cardiovascular, neuromuscular and respiratory actions.

Among the various hypotheses that have been investigated regarding yawning, there is one which claims that yawning carries out an oxygenation mission. According to this, the function of yawning would be to put the brain back into action and not the opposite, that is, to prepare it for rest and disconnection.

What is true is that when you yawn, a large amount of oxygen is introduced into the brain, so it oxygenates and becomes more alert than before the yawn. yawning action. Science explains that without yawning, even some muscle groups in the jaw would not be reactivated, which could make them “work”.

This would be the physiological theory, which bases its argument on the human body’s need to obtain oxygen and eliminate it accumulation of carbon dioxide. The brain would regain this oxygenation with the large breath of air that is produced. This principle would be the reason, the theory explains, why we yawn when we are with a group of people in a closed room, for example. From this point of view it is as if the organism was trying to maintain its own brain I wake.

Another, more recent theory indicates this Yawning helps regulate body temperature. The so-called brain cooling theory indicates that this would be the body’s way of cooling it, regulating brain temperature when other body systems do not do so adequately and/or sufficiently.

When you yawn, the walls of the maxillary sinus expand and contract to pump air to the brain, reducing its temperature. Located on the cheekbones, the maxilla is one of the four largest cavities in the human head. He stated this theory in 2007, Andrea GallupAssociate Professor of Psychology at the Polytechnic Institute of the State University of New York.