Yawning helps people become more alert

We often think that yawning is a sign of depression or sleepiness, but a new study shows that this action is good for your health, helping you to be more alert by cooling your brain.

Scientists from Princeton University have discovered that a large yawn can regulate temperature and prevent brain overheating.

During the winter in Tucson, Arizona, Professor Andrew Gallup and the team arranged for 80 randomly selected pedestrians to look at the image of the yawn and record their reaction. After that, this test is done in the same way again in the summer. The results showed that in the winter, half of the participants had yawned while in the summer, this number was only 1/4.

Since then, the team found that yawning cooled the brain. So surely you want to cool your brain in the summer by yawning?

Yawning helps regulate temperature and prevent brain overheating

However, theoretically, yawning cools the brain through heat exchange with cold air from the outside . This process will therefore not work on a very hot summer day. Professor Gallup said: 'The effect will be the opposite when the ambient temperature exceeds body temperature'.

Nearly 40% of participants (both in summer and in winter) yawned within the first five minutes, but the percentage of people yawning in the summer quickly fell below 10% later. The result is the opposite for observations in the winter.'This is the first report to show that yawning frequency changes from season to season,' Gallup said.

This may help explain why humans often become confused and disoriented in extreme temperature conditions.

The study contributes to the basic system of human physiological knowledge and provides an understanding of conditions for developing neurological diseases as well as epilepsy.