Yearning to yawn: the neural basis of contagious yawning

Yawning is contagious: Watching another person yawn may trigger us to do the same. Here we studied brain activation with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while subjects watched videotaped yawns. Significant increases in the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal, specific to yawn viewing as contrasted to viewing non-nameable mouth movements, were observed in the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) and bilaterally in the anterior STS, in agreement with the high affinity of STS to social cues. However, no additional yawn-specific activation was observed in Broca's area, the core region of the human mirror-neuron system (MNS) that matches action observation and execution. Thus, activation associated with viewing another person yawn seems to circumvent the essential parts of the MNS, in line with the nature of contagious yawns as automatically released behavioural acts-rather than truly imitated motor patterns that would require detailed action understanding. The subjects' self-reported tendency to yawn covaried negatively with activation of the left periamygdalar region, suggesting a connection between yawn contagiousness and amygdalar activation.