There is a part of your brain called the Brain Stem! It runs from the thalmus to the spinal chord (No idea where the thalmus is? Click the word Brain Stem in the line above to see a picture of the brain!) and has three little tiny pieces that, despite their physical size, are hugely enormously important to the operation of vital functions of the body! The three peices are the Pons (latin for bridge), the Reticular Formation, and the Medulla.
The Pons is the bridge between the two halves of that silly brain of yours, without it you wouldn't be able to understand yourself, let alone the world around you!
The Medulla is the bottom part of the Brain Stem, closest to the Spinal Chord, and makes sure your body does things like breathe, and also that your hearts beats, your blood pressure stays stable, and regulates wakefulness so that you don't just randomly fall asleep in the midst of everyday activities (because that would be embarrassing).
And finally we come to the little peice between the Medulla and the Pons called the Reticular Formation! This little worker sorts the information sent to your brain for the important stuff that needs to be passed on to the Thalmus as well as managing your digestion, your blood circulation, your patterns in sleep, your attentiveness, and arousal (Growwwll :). Just gotta say, that is a pretty damn funny combination of functions to be squashed all together in one small peice of your brain.
But anyway the reason we are talking about this at all is because this part of the brain (the Reticular formation) is also the same one that scientist believe is why we yawn! Basically, if your little information sorter starts getting bored because he's not recieving enough information to sort he just goes all "your are getting verrrrrrrrrry sleeeeeeeeepppyyyyy" and you yawn.
Other funny facts: There has been an observed relationship between errections and yawning (probably because both actions are managed in the same tiny section of the brain), it has also been noted that castrated animals yawnless frequently than uncastrated! There also seems to be a connection between them since an errection is a reaction that through stimulus is functionally independent-- it just happens when this or that happens, spontaneously--and well, so does yawning. When another person yawns across the room you yawn too most of the time! It's contageous!
There was once a woman hospitalized formonths because of "relentless yawning". She would yawn eight times every minute, something that seriously disturbed her breathing pattern, but because one deep yawn can supply about all the alveoli (part in the lungs that takes in oxygen to your blood!) with the oxygen they need this condition was not incredibly deadly, just, as I imagine, super annoying and fascinating!
In your cheek there is a concentration of mutiple veins so that when you yawn the the muscles in your cheek that stretch effect the circulation so that more blood is available for oxygenating!!!
(:
(I got my information from these websites: http://www.baillement.com/recherche/askenazy_reticular.html
http://neurons.wordpress.com/2007/05/30/the-brain-stem-pons-medulla-reticular-formation/ )
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