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Merely thinking about or seeing someone yawning can make you yawn. But why?
The yawn reflex has long been observed to be contagious. In 1508, Erasmus wrote, "One man's yawning makes another yawn", [39] and the French proverbialized the idea to "Un bon bâilleur en fait bâiller sept" ('One good gaper makes seven others gape'). [40] Often, if one person yawns, this may cause another person to "empathetically" yawn. [23]
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“The boredom connection is really more of a sleepiness connection, or when we’re just kind of not engaged with something in our environment and the brain is kind of transitioning towards sleep.”
Yawning is commonly associated with imminent sleep, but it seems to be a measure to maintain arousal when sleepy and so it actually prevents sleep rather than inducing it. [8] Yawning may be a cue that the body is tired and ready for sleep, but deliberate attempts to yawn may have the opposite effect of sleep induction.
In adults, wakefulness increases, especially in later cycles. One study found 3% awake time in the first ninety-minute sleep cycle, 8% in the second, 10% in the third, 12% in the fourth, and 13–14% in the fifth. Most of this awake time occurred shortly after REM sleep. [24]
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The longer the brain has been awake, the greater the synchronous firing rates of cerebral cortex neurons. After sustained periods of sleep, both the speed and synchronicity of the neurons firing are shown to decrease. [5] Another effect of wakefulness is the reduction of glycogen held in the astrocytes, which supply energy to the neurons ...