The
Social, Evolutionary, and Neuroscientific Facets
of Contagious Yawning
Steven M.
Platek
Associate
Professor of Psychology, Georgia Gwinnett
College, Lawrenceville, GA
30043 USA
Contagious yawning is a
common phenomenon affecting upwards of 60% of
healthy humans. It has also been observed, at a
lesser rate, in great apes and other primates.
Here I summarize the suggestion that contagious
yawning is a primitive expression of social
cognition, namely empathy. Susceptibility to
contagious yawning is correlated with speed to
recognize one's own face, theory of mind
processing and is also associated with
activation in regions of the brain that have
been associated with social cognitive processes.
This suggests that contagious yawning may be an
evolutionarily old process that begat a higher
level of social cognition in certain
species.
Contagious yawning, the onset of a yawn
triggered by seeing, hearing, reading, or
thinking about another person yawn is a
well-documented phenomenon. The mechanisms that
drive contagious yawning are as yet unknown, but
there is recent evidence of a link between
contagious yawning and self-processing (S.M.
Platek, S.R. Critton, T.E. Myers, G.G. Gallup
Jr., Contagious yawning: the role of
self-awareness and mental state attribution,
Cogn. Brain Res. 17 (2003) 223-227.) that is
negatively impacted by schizotypal personality
traits. The neural substrates involved in
contagious yawning, however, are unknown. Using
fMRI, we show that viewing someone yawn evokes
unique neural activity in the posterior
cingulate and precuneus. Because of the role
these areas play in self-processing (e.g.,
self-referential processing, theory of mind,
autobiographical memory), our findings provide
further support for the hypothesis that
contagious yawning may be part of a neural
network involved in empathy.
