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who can explain why one must inevitably yawn when looking at him ---->

Why is that? Any theories?

It's because it's 11:08 and we should be in bed!!!!

canon docre wrote:who can explain why one must inevitably yawn when looking at him ---->

Why is that? Any theories?

Weird - I always feel the need to yodel - isn't that what he's doing?

A yawn is contagious when watching someone or an icon do it.
It's said to be a moment of getting a said amount of oxygen to the brain.
Common belief says it's a sign you are tired.

Who knows?

scotty wrote:It's because it's 11:08 and we should be in bed!!!!

might be. it's even 12:15 over here. I have to check again tomorrow if it still has the effect.

goodnight everybody.

I think contagious yawning occurs as a result of a theory of mind,
I mean the ability to infer or empathize with what others want, know, or intend to do.
Seeing or hearing another person yawn may tap a primitive neurological substrate responsible for self-awareness and empathic modeling which produces a corresponding response in oneself.
Just a theory, or I've had too much Gin....

In an effort to find the answer, the Finnish government recently funded a brain scanning study. The results turned up some hard-to-interpret, possible clues. It also confirmed the obvious: yawn contagion is largely unconscious. Wherever it might affect the brain, it bypasses the known brain circuitry for consciously analyzing and mimicking other people’s actions.

This circuitry is called the “mirror-neuron system,� because it contains a special type of brain cells, or neurons, that become active both when their owner does something, and when he or she senses someone else doing the same thing.

Mirror neurons typically become active when a person consciously imitates an action of someone else, a process associated with learning. But they seem to play no role in yawn contagiousness, the researchers in the new study found. The cells are have no extra activity during contagious yawning compared with during other non-contagious facial movements, they observed.

Brain activity “associated with viewing another person yawn seems to circumvent the essential parts of the MNS [mirror neuron system], in line with the nature of contagious yawns as automatically released behavioural acts—rather than truly imitated motor patterns that would require detailed action understanding,� wrote the researchers, with the Helsinki University of Technology and the Research Centre Jülich, Germany. The findings are published in the February issue of the research journal Neuroimage.

But if seeing someone yawn doesn’t activate these centers, what does it do to the brain? The researchers found that it appears to strongly activate at least one brain area, called the superior temporal sulcus. But this activation was unrelated to any desire to yawn in response, so it may be irrelevant to the contagion question, the researchers added.

Possibly more significant, they wrote, was the apparent deactivation of a second brain area, called the left periamygdalar region. The more strongly a participant reported wanting to yawn in response to another person’s yawn, the stronger was this deactivation.

“This finding represents the first known neurophysiological signature of perceived yawn contagiousness,� the researchers wrote.

Exactly what the finding means is less clear, they acknowledged. The periamygdalar region is a zone that lies alongside the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain in the area of the side of the head. The periamygdalar region has been linked to the unconscious analysis of emotional expressions in faces. Why it would be deactivated in tandem with yawn contagion is unclear, the researchers said.

One thing seems clear from the study is that “contagious yawning does not rely on brain mechanisms of action understanding,� wrote one of the researchers, Riitta Hari of the Helsinki University of Technology, in a recent email. Rather, she continued, it seems to be an “‘automatically’ released (and most likely very archaic) motor pattern,� or sequence of physical actions.

In the study, volunteers looked at videos of actors yawning or making other mouth movements. Meanwhile their brains were scanned using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a system that shows the amount of activity or work going on in various brain areas based on the amount of oxygen being used up there. The volunteers were later asked how strongly they had been tempted to yawn while viewing the pictures.

Apart from the physical brain mechanisms of yawn contagiousness, researchers have offered different reasons as to why it exists. Some have proposed that in early humans, yawn contagiousness might have helped people communicate their alertness levels to each other, and thus coordinate their sleep schedules.

This might be part of a more general phenomenon of unconscious signals that serve to synchronize group behavior, the authors of the Neuroimage paper wrote. “Such synchronization could be essential for species survival and works without action understanding, like when a flock of birds rises to the air as soon as the first bird does so—supposably as it notices a predator.�




well, you did ask! (source)

A yawn is quite catching you see. Like a cough. It just takes one yawn to start other yawns off

I'll take Dr. Seuss any day!!!

Fcuk me Paul! Right can you now tell me why it is that I get the munchies after smoking enhanced cigarettes?

weebleswobble wrote:Fcuk me Paul! Right can you now tell me why it is that I get the munchies after smoking enhanced cigarettes?

Your body, it seems, contains specialized proteins called cannabinoid receptors. (Broadly speaking, receptors react to certain stimuli and produce certain results.) The best-known cannabinoid is delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the principal psychoactive ingredient of weed (aka cannabis). Far more important from the body's standpoint, however, are the endogenous (i.e., internally synthesized) cannabinoids, endocannabinoids for short, which work like neurotransmitters and are produced as part of the built-in apparatus by which peripheral parts of the body inform the brain that it's lunchtime. Endocannabinoids and cannabinoid receptors are abundant in the hypothalamus, the region of the brain that plays a pivotal role in appetite regulation. In 1992 researchers identified the first endocannabinoid and named it anandamide, from the Sanskrit ananda, meaning inner bliss. In other words, when you smoke dope, you're replicating (albeit with much greater intensity) an effect the body produces naturally for itself.

Hunger regulation isn't the only thing endocannabinoids do for the body. Though their action is still imperfectly understood, a 1998 research paper suggests that they help you "feel less pain, control your movement, relax, eat, forget, sleep and protect" yourself against stress. In fact, some scientists think they're an important part of the body's general stress-recovery system.

The significant role of cannabinoids in body chemistry has created great excitement about the therapeutic use of THC and related compounds. The most obvious beneficiaries are people who've lost the desire to eat--for example, late-stage cancer or AIDS patients. (In India, in fact, folks have used pot to treat loss of appetite since around 300 AD.) Though research is incomplete, it appears that (a) smoking marijuana is the best means of administering THC; (b) food consumption increases primarily in social settings; and (c) the foods consumed tend to be sweet. So it's possible that someday the recommended treatment for disease-induced anorexia may consist of lighting up a few joints, sitting around in a group, and munching Oreos. Lest you get the wrong idea, though, appetite-suppressed patients don't necessarily have to get high to enjoy the benefits of marijuana. At the lowest effective dose, test subjects report little or no euphoria, sleepiness, or dizziness.

Cannabinoids have a variety of other medical applications. The use of marijuana in the treatment of glaucoma is well-known. THC, under the name Dronabinol, has been used since 1985 to ease the nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy. Cannabinoid antagonists, which inhibit the effects of cannabis-type compounds, have been shown to suppress sugar and alcohol consumption in lab animals and are thought to hold great promise for obese humans, particularly those with a weakness for sweets.

from here

Any more questions for Doktor Lazarus?

Dr Suess???

weebleswobble wrote:Fcuk me Paul! Right can you now tell me why it is that I get the munchies after smoking enhanced cigarettes?

Can only be habit. Sorry Paul, but as an enhanced smoker *if you mean weed or dube or hash or whatever* it's the blood levels that need the sugar rush to get active if it's an occasional user.
I'm so enhanced in my smoking habits *keeping in mind I have the opposite effect to the so called know feeling*, that it's a daily habit and I am functioning in the usual society. I don't get the above mentioned munchies, in fact, if I haven't had an enhanced smoke I can't eat because I'm just not hungry.

NEVERMIND me ...Doktor Lazarus has posted!

Go to bed Paul .

boudicca wrote:Go to bed Paul .

Why? I think there could be a living in Googling things for people for money!

It's called "Tech Support", Paul.

I have an image of Paul the GP in a Surgery with a patient.

"Hold on, I'm just downloading...I'll have your diagnosis in a mo."

I can make the dogfiend yawn by pretending to yawn at him. So yawning contagion isn't limited to humans.

Dark wrote:It's called "Tech Support", Paul.

markfiend wrote:I can make the dogfiend yawn by pretending to yawn at him. So yawning contagion isn't limited to humans.

Aye! And it works the other way, too..
Another interesting question, what makes the girls go "awwww!" when a cat yawns? Come on Doc, what does Google say now? Eh?

(Imagine, at the operating theatre:"The appendicectomy must be done now! Nurse, hand me the,... the.. That tippy thing!")

Oh, and on a programme (If I remember right it was by marvelous David Attenborough) the theory was qouted that yawning actually was an archaic signal in a for a herd/group for resting periods. As Dogs, cats and even horses (probably various others) show this kind of behaviour its origins must be very far back in the history of developement of mamals.

WOW!

Doktor Lazarus I bow before your knowledge/research.

timsinister wrote:I have an image of Paul the GP in a Surgery with a patient.

"Hold on, I'm just downloading...I'll have your diagnosis in a mo."

"You young squirts couldn't lance a pimple without an electric vibrating scalpel with automatic drain and suture.... Soon we'll be operating by remote control on patients we never see.... We'll be nothing but button pushers. All the skill is going out of surgery.... All the know-how and make-do... Did I ever tell you about the time I performed an appendectomy with a rusty sardine can? And once I was caught short without instrument one and removed a uterine tumor with my teeth. That was in the Upper Effendi, and besides..."

eotunun wrote:

markfiend wrote:I can make the dogfiend yawn by pretending to yawn at him. So yawning contagion isn't limited to humans.

Aye! And it works the other way, too..
Another interesting question, what makes the girls go "awwww!" when a cat yawns? Come on Doc, what does Google say now? Eh?

That's just girls yawning in response - in the reverse of the example Markfiend posted!

Dark wrote:It's called "Tech Support", Paul.

Damn - I thought regurgitating dubious third-hand writing off the internet for money was called Journalism