Did you yawn just looking at this picture? Why are such common everyday actions so misunderstood and mysterious to us?

Let’s start with this very common action of yawning. The original hypothesis of yawning was when the body had a build up of carbon dioxide and lack of oxygen, the brain stem would activate the yawn reflex to help normalize CO2 and O2 within the blood. This hypothesis is now deemed incorrect after a study was done by Robert R. Provine. Every explanation as to not only why we yawn, but why it seems so irresistibly contagious has been inaccurate or debunked. In lieu of these old inaccurate explanations, the scientific community has been a twitter with the latest discovery of very special cells called mirror neurons within the last decade.

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