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Brain size drives differences in yawn duration across mammals and birds
- amarant 5y agoI'm definitely citing this study next time I'm sleepy and someone comments on my constant yawning
- purplecats 5y agotitle doesn't state if larger size is positively correlated with more frequent yawns :)
- airstrike 5y agoYou're giving people far more credit than I would! You can get a ton of mileage out of the most spurious of correlations...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- montebicyclelo 5y agoYawning cools the brain?!
- ElvisTrout 5y agoYes, that’s it’s purpose. Hence why the results of this study is not really surprising.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cinntaile 5y agoWe don't know if that's the purpose of yawning.
- rukuu001 5y agoI researched this independently when I started yawning madly at the gym
- jdonaldson 5y agoOk, glad to know I'm not the only one to do this. However, the plot thickens... why is this happening?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ggm 5y agoIg-nobel worthy??
- emptysongglass 5y agoDoesn't read like sound science when all of my 6 pet rats yawn longer than I do.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- KMag 5y agoRead The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and post back here. Minor spoiler: mice (okay, not rats) are projections into our universe of immensely powerful trans-dimensional beings, or something like that.
- emptysongglass 5y agoMakes sense as I really seem to be their pet most of the time or worse a glorified janitor: the "poo shoveler".
- sebmellen 5y agoScared me for a moment there, I’ve killed upwards of 40 rats during this pandemic (outside). They seem to have gone rampant with the onset of COVID.
- donkarma 5y agoWait until you see the mouse plague in Australia
- exporectomy 5y agoI don't think they found absolute brain mass was correlated with yawn duration. They scaled brain mass in some complicated way that might put rats above humans for all I know: "we calculated residual brain mass measures from a phylogenetically controlled linear regression of the respective brain measure on body mass"
- true_religion 5y ago
- kruxigt 5y agoWhy do we need to cool our brains when we are tired and not for example when we are exercising or thinking hard or in a hot environment?
- exporectomy 5y agoMy totally made up guess is when we sleep our brains operate at a lower temperature than awake, regardless of activity. So to quickly transition from waking temperature to sleeping temperature, maybe yawning does a rapid cooling that's then maintained by normal slower-acting processes.
- op00to 5y agoMaybe you are tired, and thus need to cool your brain.
- amelius 5y agodrives -> correlates with
- ekianjo 5y agoThe model hardly predicts anything, or then the data is super noisy. It's not very convincing to express things with certainty when your model hardly fits the data.
- ekianjo 5y ago> Our species-level measures of average brain mass, body mass, total neuron count, and cortical and pallium neuron counts were highly skewed. We therefore log-transformed these measures prior to statistical analysis. Most of the yawns were collected in non-controlled conditions, and then the rest of the data is completely junk, so this whole paper is garbage.
- stubish 5y agoI don't understand why I would need to cool my brain more when I'm tired. I'm not buying the theory that yawns are for cooling brains without more details.
- 988747 5y agoI guess because your brain overheating is what's making you feel tired in the first place?
- taneq 5y agoThat seems pretty easy to falsify. I still get tired in cold environments, do you?
- zeta0134 5y agoI actually have an easier time maintaining flow in cold environments. I keep my house pretty chill and warm the rest of my body with warm clothes. Summer in South Texas was miserable for me, so I moved father north and could not be happier with the change. It's not that I don't still get tired, of course I do. More that I'm less affected by the ambient heat.
- 11235813213455 5y agoProbably because the brain is what takes the most energy for us
- vnglst 5y agoI read somewhere that when we fall asleep our body temperature is lowered a bit, maybe that’s what’s happening?
- montebicyclelo 5y agoThere's also the social aspect of yawning - seeing someone yawn triggers a yawn... Maybe brains like to maintain a similar temperature to nearby brains.
- kburman 5y agoDoesn't explain why yawn is contagious
- csunbird 5y agoThe word “yawn” triggered me and now I am yawning constantly.
- temptemptemp111 5y agoDrives? Correlates! "Scientists" are literally brain dead.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoBut how long are their yawns?
- temptemptemp111 5y agoThey only make my yawns longer ;)
- The_rationalist 5y agoWhy is yawning highly correlated with fatigue then? Why is yawning socially contagious? Can't the thermal hypothesis be measured in lab? The brain size correlation has a co-founder variable: Lung size/capacitance.
- b4ke 5y agoYawns are caused by changes in the souls position relative to others.... why it is contagious, and why someone who is cognitively your superior will cause you to yawn in their presence. I know it sounds nuts, but they know more than they let on.... just look for the well seal ;)
- Madmallard 5y agoThis is hilarious
- b4ke 5y agoIf you really understood what was inferred you would be terrified, or you do and there is truth in your humor. Being intentionally dismissive or flippant is not cognitively challenging nor particularly original. Thanks for the consideration though.
- sulZ 5y agoIs this a reference to something that I'm not picking up on?
- b4ke 5y agoHa los are a real thing, praise be.
- da39a3ee 5y agoI find it a bit sad that whimsical/mundane science interests/amuses people. It's also sad that educationalists mandate that science taught in schools should be "relevant to students' lives". So a bunch of apes on a vegetated rock hurtling through space learn how to read the nutritional info on the back of cereal boxes instead of thinking about the genesis of time, matter, energy, information, and life from fucking nothing.
- jerrysievert 5y agonow explain why when you see a cat yawn, you have a compulsion to say "big yawn!"
- Quasimarion 5y agoHonestly the charts in the paper is not very convincing. The outliers are all over the place and there is hardly an association judging from naked eye. (e.g: imagine seeing figure 4 without the model prediction in the background)
- wholinator2 5y agoAgreed, it looks like they may have even missed a U-shaped quadratic association. If were doing pure curve fitting it'd work way better with those data. For real though, very unconvincing graphs.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- erulabs 5y agoI just saw my unborn son yawn in the womb on an ultrasound today so this brings me a bit of silly joy - knowing his brain folds are just developing and he might be cooling them! That said, the stats nerd in me doesn’t buy this study outright. I’d personally hypothesize that yawns, like almost all other emotional displays (smiling, laughing, worrying, eye dilation) are simple pre-language communications. It’s useful for a pack of animals to know when one animal is tired - yawning is contagious because it’s advantageous for the pack to have a similar sleep schedule - and to be aware of how each other feels. Our faces display our emotions clearly as a form of communication to others. We developed whites in our eyes, for example, so we can track the attention of our pack-mates. It's easy to forget that biologically, spoken language is a brand new invention - but communication is extremely ancient.
- etangent 5y ago> I’d personally hypothesize that yawns, like almost all other emotional displays are simple pre-language communications The trouble with that hypothesis that even very primitive vertebrates that have or have had almost no social history also yawn.
- erulabs 5y agoAgreed - but it’s a chicken/egg issue there. It’s not clear that behavior is a precursor to social groups. Social groups with no communication behavior would be very hard to maintain. Hard to say tho for sure which comes first
- just-ok 5y ago> yawning is contagious [...] to be aware of how each other feels To this point, fascinatingly, psychopaths are immune to “contagious” yawns, highlighting their inability to empathize with others. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-online-secrets/201508/why-psychopaths-are-immune-contagious-yawning https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-online-secrets/...
- loa_in_ 5y agoI thought it was commonly known that yawning promotes cerebrospinal fluid movement in the neck.