Photo: flickr/baileysjunk
Wondering what's been going on lately in the field of chasmology (the scientific study of yawning)? Well, we still don't really understand why people yawn, but we can add another contender to the list of theories: brain cooling. In this study, the authors showed subjects photos of people yawning to determine their susceptibility to "yawn contagion." They found that the subjects were more likely to "catch" yawns in the summer compared with the winter. Although there are a number of things that change with the season, the only variable found to correlate with yawning was higher temperature, suggesting that yawns might have a function in cooling the brain (via the release of heat into air in the lungs). So the next time someone gets mad at you for yawning when you should be paying attention, just tell them your brain is hot and you're cooling it off.
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