Smart tips to make life easier. Posted on February 24, 2012 in Humor If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Facebook or Twitter . Thanks for visiting! Rate this Post (16 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading... So... Haniblog 2.0. Lucid Dream Guru - Master the Art of Lucid Dreaming. 1300813500_fur-coat-comes-to-life.gif (GIF Image, 280x222 pixels) Crime Map Beta. Sleepyti.me bedtime calculator. Penn Gazette | Essays | Notes from the Undergrad. By Andrew Newburg | Yawn. Go ahead: Laugh if you want (though you’ll benefit your brain more if you smile), but in my professional opinion, yawning is one of the best-kept secrets in neuroscience.
Even my colleagues who are researching meditation, relaxation, and stress reduction at other universities have overlooked this powerful neural-enhancing tool. However, yawning has been used for many decades in voice therapy as an effective means for reducing performance anxiety and hypertension in the throat. Several recent brain-scan studies have shown that yawning evokes a unique neural activity in the areas of the brain that are directly involved in generating social awareness and creating feelings of empathy. One of those areas is the precuneus, a tiny structure hidden within the folds of the parietal lobe.
According to researchers at the Institute of Neurology in London, the precuneus appears to play a central role in consciousness, self-reflection, and memory retrieval.