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Updated: Jun 28, 2026

A Laboratory Method to Measure Contagious Yawning in Rats
Published on: June 14, 2019
Contagious yawning and the frontal lobe: an fMRI study
Fatta B Nahab1, Noriaki Hattori, Ziad S Saad
1Human Motor Control Section, Medical Neurology Branch, National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. nahabf@ninds.nih.gov
None:
We conducted a slow event-related fMRI experiment with naïve subjects' passively viewing yawn and various other control videos along with correlative behavioral testing. Specifically associated with the viewing of the contagious yawn was an area of activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These findings suggest a role for the prefrontal cortex in the processing of contagious yawning, while demonstrating a unique automaticity in the processing of contagious motor programs which take place independently of mirror neuron networks.
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