I was told it's due to your brain needing more oxygen?
this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
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It's not entirely physiological. It is also very much a psychological phenomenon as well. For example, seeing someone else yawn is more likely to make you yawn. Hell, talking about yawning is more likely to make you yawn. In fact, if you've spent any time in this thread, you've likely yawned already.
Wonder if its related to physiological sigh
That's what I've heard too.
Fun fact: I've been using a ventilator to breathe with for the past six years, my brain should have learned by now that yawning doesn't give it more oxygen. I still yawn.
For questions of fact rather than opinion, you're probably better off asking something like Wikipedia instead of Lemmy.
Do you mean why do we yawn? No one knows as far as I know.
Contagious yawning is so weird! Even writing about it makes it happen! I used to take a med that made me yawn a lot. That was super annoying. Some people with autism don't catch it.
There's a screenshot I've seen a few times over the years, of part of a Tumblr or reddit thread. I've spent the past half hour looking for it, with no joy, so I probably have some details wrong.
The first part, someone comments about someone who got injured and broke the part of his brain that controlled yawning so he just kept yawning for years. And then someone comes in and says something like, "Wait, what - you're telling me that the default is YAWNING = YES and we have a specific mechanism that says 'No, don't yawn this moment' and it does that constantly?!" And ... then there's a third part where they talk about sharks or something? Like I said, I can't find it right now :(
Disclaimer, honestly I don't know.
But I once asked this sort of question regarding hiccups, and some of the answers I got were that it's something of a vestigial reflex from birth, when you take your first breaths.
Not an expert but I remember it was slmething among the lines of accelerating your heartbeat and increasing the air intake. So the blood circulation is improved which activates some parts of your body and you feel more awake.