Yawning cools the brain - scientists

In winter, people tend to yawn more frequently than in summer. Researchers believe this suggests that yawning helps regularization of the brain

So far, no general explanation for why people and animals yawn. For several decades, researchers have put forward different hypotheses witty, but almost all of them had no experimental confirmation. The new theory presented by scientists from Princeton University (USA), is good at least that is supported by experimental data and accurate statistics, reports complement.Ru.

According to Andrew Gallup and Omar Weaker, biological significance of yawning is regularization of the brain. Preliminary studies have shown a correlation with the temperature of the intensity of yawning in the rat brain. Cooling the brain can occur with this for two reasons: firstly, the gape increases blood circulation to the head through the work of the jaw muscles, and secondly, the heat transfer contributes to the inflow of cold air from outside. If everything is indeed the case, then the animals should be in heat yawn less than in the cold.

The researchers tested this assumption is no longer in animals and in humans. Scientists assessed the frequency of yawning passers: the eighty - in the summer, the same amount - in the winter. Summer temperatures slightly above human body temperature, air humidity was low, the winter was on average around 21 ˚ C, and humidity was increased.

It turned out that time of year really matters. If the temperature is lowered, people yawn more frequently, even taking into account factors such as humidity, time spent in front of it to sleep, and time spent away from home. In winter, yawned almost half of the experiment participants, but in the summer - only a quarter. Moreover, the more people spend time outside in the summer, the stronger the intensity decreased yawning. About 40% of the participants yawned in the first few minutes after leaving home, but soon yawning remained only 10%. In winter, the situation was vice verse, although the frequency of yawns did not increase as much as she was falling in the summer.

This is certainly the first paper, which establishes the relationship between seasons and a tendency to yawn. However, if the hypothesis of a regulatory role of yawns is correct, it can serve as an additional diagnostic sign in a number of central nervous system disorders that are accompanied by impaired blood flow to the brain.