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July 6, 2007

Acerca del bostezo

Todos los días se aprende algo nuevo :D

Con la intención de encontrar la causa que lo produce, Andrew C. Gallup y Gordon G. Gallup, Jr., investigadores de la Universidad de Albany, estudiaron el bostezo en un grupo de estudiantes universitarios.

Los científicos descubrieron que el bostezo no está relacionado con la ausencia de oxígeno, dado que las alteraciones en los niveles de oxígeno y dióxido de carbono en sangre no afectaban al bostezo.

Y no solo eso, los científicos han descubierto que bostezar es un proceso que protege a nuestro cerebro del sobrecalentamiento y que además actúa como señal de alerta para otros.

Esto sucede ya que en el transcurso del día, nuestro cerebro se calienta hasta el punto de quemar, él solo, un tercio de las calorías que consumimos. Para lograr funcionar de forma más eficiente, el cerebro necesita que se le enfríe. Por eso, cuando una persona bosteza, se incrementa instintivamente el flujo de sangre que aporta el aire fresco.

Al contrario de lo que sostiene la creencia popular, bostezar no significa que una persona quiera dormir (tal vez solo elimine la urgencia por dormir). Los investigadores también explicaron el fenómeno del "bostezo contagioso" diciendo que tendemos a bostezar cuando vemos a alguien hacerlo porque este acto llama nuestra atención, y esto ayuda al grupo a estar alerta contra las señales de peligro, osease que cuando vemos a una persona bostezar nuestra reacción es bostezar también.


Acá más información al respecto:

Yawning Saves Your Brain From Overheating

The next time you "catch a yawn" from someone across the room, you're not copying their sleepiness, you're participating in an ancient, hardwired ritual that might have evolved to help groups stay alert as a means of detecting danger. That's the conclusion of University at Albany researchers Andrew C. Gallup and Gordon G. Gallup, Jr. in a study outlined in the May 2007 issue in Evolutionary Psychology.

The psychologists, who studied yawning in college students, concluded that people do not yawn because they need oxygen, since experiments show that raising or lowering oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood fails to produce the reaction.  Rather, yawning acts as a brain-cooling mechanism. The brain burns up to a third of the calories we consume, and as a consequence generates heat. 

According to Gallup and Gallup, our brains, not unlike computers, operate more efficiently when cool, and yawning enhances the brain's functioning by increasing blood flow and drawing in cooler air.

To research the theory that yawning evolved to cool the brain, the UAlbany psychologists had students watch videotapes of people yawning and counted the number of contagious yawns.  In one experiment they found that 50 percent of the people who were instructed to breathe normally or through their mouths yawned while watching other people yawn, while those told to breathe through their nose did not yawn at all. 

In another experiment they found that subjects who held a cold pack to their forehead acted similarly to those who were instructed to breathe through their nose — they, too, did not yawn, while those who held a warm pack or a room temperature pack to their forehead yawned normally. 

Evidence shows that blood vessels in the nasal cavity and face send cool blood to the brain, and by breathing through the nose or by cooling the forehead, the brain is cooled, eliminating the need to yawn.   Recent evidence has linked multiple sclerosis, a demyelinating disease, to thermoregulatory dysfunction.  Excessive yawning is a common symptom of multiple sclerosis, and some MS patients report brief symptom relief after they yawn.

The UAlbany researchers also suggest, again contrary to popular opinion, that yawning does not promote sleep but helps mitigate the need to sleep.  Since yawning occurs when brain temperature rises, sending cool blood to the brain serves to maintain optimal levels of mental efficiency.  Therefore, the psychologists say, when mental processing slows and someone yawns, the tendency for other people to yawn contagiously might have evolved to promote group vigilance as a means of detecting danger.

So the next time you are telling a story and a listener yawns there is no need to be offended — yawning, a physiological mechanism designed to maintain attention, turns out to be a compliment.

Evolutionary Psychology

www.epjournal.net – 2007. 5(1): 92-101

Yawning as a Brain Cooling Mechanism: Nasal Breathing and Forehead Cooling Diminish the Incidence of Contagious Yawning

Andrew C. Gallup, Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY 12222, USA.

Gordon G. Gallup Jr., Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Albany. Email: gallup@albany.edu (Corresponding author)

Abstract: We conducted two experiments that implicate yawning as a thermoregulatory mechanism. The first experiment demonstrates that different patterns of breathing influence susceptibility to contagious yawning. When participants were not directed how to breathe or were instructed to breathe orally (inhaling and exhaling through their mouth), the incidence of contagious yawning in response to seeing videotapes of people yawning was about 48%. When instructed to breathe nasally (inhaling and exhaling through their nose), no participants exhibited contagious yawning. In a second experiment, applying temperature packs to the forehead also influenced the incidence of contagious yawning. When participants held a warm pack (460C) or a pack at room temperature to their forehead while watching people yawn, contagious yawning occurred 41% of the time. When participants held a cold pack (40C) to their forehead, contagious yawning dropped to 9%. These findings suggest that yawning has an adaptive/functional component that it is not merely the derivative of selection for other forms of behavior.

http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep0592101.pdf

Fuente: http://huehueteotl.wordpress.com/2007/06/25/yawning-saves-your-brain-from-overheating/


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