I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Disease Zone. It has scientists studying the causes and processes of illness . Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
🙂 just thinking about it makes me want to yawn funny enough. Back in Holland, there was a particular type of pharmacy chain that had a huge yawning head hanging above the entrance and you couldn’t help but yawn every time you looked at it.
It’s all in the brain! I can’t give you a definite answer, because scientists don’t know for sure yet, but they think it’s a group of brain cells called “mirror neurons”. These brain cells lie in the front of your brain and get activated when you see someone yawn! These brain cells are known to be responsible for imitation, which is how we learn. Just look at a toddler, they will imitate a lot of what they see their parents do, that’s how they learn.
Scientists now think that we yawn because of empathy (= you can identify how someone else feels).
They have found in studies that you are more likely to yawn the closer you are to someone. And studies where they looked at children with autism, who generally do not show empathy, the kids yawn less or not at all when they looked at pictures with yawning people.
Even some monkeys and dogs seem to yawn after seeing their friends yawn. It still doesn’t really explain why we do it though….
Maybe some researcher will find the real answer some day
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*YAAAWN* Now that thats out of the way… 🙂 Natasha has answered really well. The current thinking is that empathy plays a big role in why we yawn when we see someone else yawn. But while I was finding out all I could about this I came across this website https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/yawn.html that has some really cool facts about yawning that I highly recommend checking out. For instance – did you know even fish and birds yawn!
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Dear Sarahb; Natasha and Kym’s site explained well-; Empathy is very good to explain the situation and the imitation as a way of learning is good, too. However, I want to add that the fact they are exposed in the same situation(time and space, and to the same event whatever may be)could be another factor.
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