More heat, some light, directions for research by Andrew
Gallup
Over the past 5 years, numerous reports, all by
Andrew Gallup's team, accredit the idea of the
thermoregulatory effect of yawning. Gallup submits here a
review of all its publications and discuss arguments
challenging opposite opinion. He finds them unfounded and
not demonstrated: " Heretofore, no existing alternative
hypothesis of yawning can explain these results, which
have important implications for understanding the
potential functional role of this behavior, both
physiologically and socially, in humans and other
animals". In discussion he stress the broader
applications of this work in clinical settings.
Une
synthèse et une discussion par Andrew Gallup de sa
théorie originale
Au cours de ces 5 dernières années, de
nombreux travaux, tous de l'équipe d'Andrew
Gallup, accréditent l'idée d'un effet de
refroidissement du cerveau par le bâillement.
Gallup propose ici une revue de toutes ses publications.
D'après lui, aucune étude n'est venue
contre-dire ses résultats, de façon
démontrée. Il discute successivement les
arguments émis par chaque contradicteur pour les
trouver infondés et non démontrés.
Il envisage aussi les conséquences cliniques qui
devraient résulter de ses travaux.
Hypotheses are fundamental to all sciences, including
medicine. They play a critical role in motivating the
development of science, since interesting and important
hypotheses foster the diversity and debate upon which the
scientific process depends. It is necessary to learn and
understand how to assess a process, realize and discuss
details and consequently launch a hypothesis.
This book offers a number of novel, non-mainstream
hypotheses - in various states of development - from
authors with relevant expertise and experience.
For example:
Could Cytomegalovirus be Causing Widespread Outbreaks
of Chronic Poor Health?
The Cold Chain Hypothesis: An Update
Reflections on Pellagra: Lessons and Hypotheses for
Diseases Ancient and Moder
The Potential Evolutionary Significance of the Pineal
Gland
Are the Systemic Arterial Blood, Intracranial and
Intraocular Pressures Co-regulated?
House Dust Mites Do Not Live in House Dust: Evidence
and Implications for the Current Understanding of House
Dust Mite Allergy
Des
hypothèses en médecine
clinique
Les hypothèses sont fondamentales pour toutes
les sciences, y compris la médecine. Elles jouent
un rôle essentiel dans la démarche du
progrès scientifique et dans l'instauration d'un
débat nécessaire à sa
diversité et à son innovation.
Il est, bien sûr, nécessaire d'apprendre
et de comprendre comment évaluer un processus
hypothétique, réaliser et discuter ses
tenants et aboutissants et par conséquent comment
formuler une hypothèse.
Cet ouvrage propose un certain nombre de nouvelles
hypothèses, hors des raisonnements tardionnels de
la médecine, à divers stades de
développement, par des auteurs ayant une expertise
et une expérience pertinentes dans chaque domaine
abordé.
Par exemple: La chaine du froid est-elle la souce de
maladies, Les CMV à l'origine de pathologies
chroniques etc...
Impaired resonance in
offenders with psychopathic traits
Hagenmuller F, Rössler W, Endrass J, Rossegger
A, Haker H.
[Article in
German]
Neuropsychiatr
2012;26(2):65-71
Forschungsbereich für Klinische
und Soziale Psychiatrie, Psychiatrische
Universitätsklinik Zürich, Schweiz
Resonance is the phenomenon of unconsciously
mirroring the motor actions of another person. Beside
autism and schizophrenia psychopathic personality traits
are associated with empathy dysfunction.
Hagenmuller and colleagues explore empathic resonance
in terms of contagion by laughing and yawning in a
group of offenders with psychopathic traits. Compared to
the control group, the offenders showed significantly
less contagion and less self-reported empathic
tendencies. Individuals who rated themselves as more
empathic showed more contagion.
The observed reduced resonance in terms of contagion
may illuminate the cold-heartedness, with which some
psychopathic offenders treat their victims: When embodied
experiencing of other's physical and emotional situation
is missing, a natural inhibition of violence may be
overcome. The small sample size limits the
generalisability of these findings.
Plus d'empahie -
plus de réplication
La résonance consiste en ce
phénomène de mimer en miroir de
façon inconsciente les activités motrices
de quelqu'un d'autre. D'un autre côté,
l'autisme et la schizophrénie sont des traits de
personnalités pathologiques associés
à un déficit des capacités
d'empathie.
Hagenmuller et ses collègues ont entrepris
d'examiner la résonance empathique d'un groupe
d'adolescents psychotiques en appréciant leur
sensibilité à la réplication du
bâillement et du rire. Comparativement au groupe
contrôle, les malades montre moins de
sensiblité à 'la contagion' et de
capacité d'empathie.
Cette sensiblité réduite pourrait
expliquer la froideur et l'insensibilité qu'ils
manifestent vis à vis de leur victime en cas
d'agression.
Graduate Neuroscience Program, Emory
University, Atlanta GA, USA.
Front Hum Neurosci
2012;6:224.
Yawns are a specific
example of a contagious facial expression
Human neuroscience has seen a recent boom in studies
on reflective, controlled, explicit social cognitive
functions like imitation, perspective-taking, and
empathy. The relationship of these higher-level functions
to lower-level, reflexive, automatic, implicit functions
is an area of current research. As the field continues to
address this relationship, we suggest that an
evolutionary, comparative approach will be useful, even
essential. There is a large body of research on
reflexive, automatic, implicit processes in animals.
A growing perspective sees social cognitive processes
as phylogenically continuous, making findings in other
species relevant for understanding our own. One of these
phylogenically continuous processes appears to be
self-other matching or simulation. Mice are more
sensitive to pain after watching other mice experience
pain; geese experience heart rate increases when seeing
their mate in conflict; and infant macaques, chimpanzees,
and humans automatically mimic adult facial
expressions.
In this article, Hecht et al. review findings in
different species that illustrate how such reflexive
processes are related to ("higher order") reflexive
processes, such as cognitive empathy, theory of mind, and
learning by imitation. They do so in the context of
self-other matching in three different domains-in the
motor domain (somatomotor movements), in the perceptual
domain (eye movements and cognition about visual
perception), and in the autonomic/emotional domain. They
also review research on the developmental origin of these
processes and their neural bases across species.
They highlight gaps in existing knowledge and point
out some questions for future research. They conclude
that our understanding of the psychological and neural
mechanisms of self-other mapping and other functions in
our own species can be informed by considering the
layered complexity these functions in other
species.
Yawns are a specific example of a contagious
facial expression that is contagious in several species.
In addition to humans, macaques (Paukner and Anderson,
2006), gelada baboons (Palagi et al., 2009), chimpanzees
(Anderson et al., 2004; Campbell et al., 2009; Campbell
and de Waal, 2011), and dogs (Joly-Mascheroni et al.,
2008; Harr et al., 2009) also experience contagious
yawning. In humans, viewing others' yawns activates
precuneus, posterior cingulate, and superior temporal
sulcus, all regions that have been associated with
"higher-level" forms of social cognition (Platek et al.,
2005; Schurmann et al., 2005). Platek (2010) notes that
individual humans who are more susceptible to contagious
yawning tend to be better at higher-order social
cognitive measures like theory of mind processing and
self-face recognition, and suggests that yawn contagion
may be an evolutionarily old processes that became the
basis for these more complex forms of social
cognition.
-Arnott
SR et al. An investigation of auditory contagious
yawning Cognitive, Affective, Behavioral Neurosci
2009;9(3):335-342
-Anderson
JR et al Contagious yawning in chimpanzees The Royal
Society Biology Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2004; 271
Suppl 6; S468-470
-Anderson
JR et al Psychological influences on yawning in
children Current Psychology Letters Behaviour, Brain,
Cognition 2003;2:11
-Anderson JR,
Matsuzawa T. Yawning: An Opening into Empathy?
Cognitive Development in Chimpanzees. T Matsuzawa, M
Tomonaga, M Tanaka Editors. Springer 2006
-Caswell TA,
The effects of status on yawning behavior. Thesis
1991
-Campbell
MW et al. Do chimpanzees yawn
contagiously in response to 3d
computer animations? 2008
-Cooper
NR, Puzzo I, Pawley A Contagious yawning: the mirror
neuron system may be a candidate physiological mechanism
Medical Hyportheses 2008;71(6):975-976
-Cooper
NR, Puzzo I, et al. Bridging a yawning chasm: EEG
investigations into the debate concerning the role of the
human mirror neuron system in contagious yawning.Cogn
Affect Behav Neurosci. 2012;12(2):393-405
-Demuru
E, Palagi E. In Bonobos Yawn Contagion Is Higher
among Kin and Friends. PLoS One. 2012; 7(11): e49613
-Dijksterhuis
A, Bargh JA The perception-behavior
expressway:automatic effects of social perception on
social behavior Advances in Experimental Social
Psychology 2001;33:1-40.
-Estow, S
Jamieson JP, Yates JR Self-monitoring and mimicry of
positive and negative social behaviors Journal of
Research in Personality 2007;41(2):425-433
-Gallagher HL, Frith
CD Functional imaging of theory of mind Trends in
Cognitive Scie. 2003;7(2):77-83
-Giganti F,
Ziello ME Contagious and spontaneous yawning in
autistic and typically developing children CPL 2009
-Giganti
F, Zilli I. The daily time course of contagious and
spontaneous yawning among humans. J Ethol
2011;29(2):215-216
-Lindsay
SR Coping with fear and stress: licking and yawning.
Handbook of applied dog behavior and training
2000
-Madsen EA,
Persson T. Contagious yawning in domestic dog puppies
(Canis lupus familiaris): the effect of ontogeny and
emotional closeness on low-level imitation in dogs. Anim
Cogn. 2012
-Massen
JJ, Vermunt DA, Sterck EH. Male Yawning Is More
Contagious than Female Yawning among Chimpanzees (Pan
troglodytes). PLoS One. 2012;7(7):e40697.
-Norscia
I, Palagi E. Yawn Contagion and Empathy in Homo
sapiens. PLoS ONE. 2011;6(12): e28472
-O'Hara SJ,
Reeve AV A test of the yawning contagion and
emotional connectedness hypothesis in dogs, Canis
familiaris. Animal Behaviour 2011;81:335-340
-Palagi
E, Leone A, Mancini G, Ferrari PF. Contagious yawning
in gelada baboons as a possible expression of empathy.
Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2009;106(46):19262-19567
-Paukner A,
Anderson JR Video-induced
yawning in stumptail macaques
(Macaca arctoides) Biol Lett 2006;2(1):36-38
-Perkins
JR Teaching Dogs to Yawn, Sneeze, and Implications
for Preparedness Theory and Observational
Learning. In: Kusonose, Ryo and
Sato, Shusuke 39th Congress of the International Society
for Applied Ethology, Kanagawa, Japan. 20-24 August,
2005
-Platek SM, SR
Critton, et al Contagious yawning: the role of
self-awareness and mental state attribution Cogn Brain
Res 2003;17(2):223-227
-Platek S
et al. Neural correlates of self-face recognition
2008 Brain Res;1232:173-184
-Senju
A, Kikuchi Y, Akechi H et al. Does eye contact induce
contagious yawning in children with autism spectrum
disorder? J of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
2009;39(11):1598-1602
-Silva K, Bessa
J, de Sousa L. Auditory contagious yawning in
domestic dogs (Canis familiaris): first evidence for
social modulation. Anim Cogn. 2012.
-Yoon JMD, Tennie
C Contagious yawning: a reflection of empathy,
mimicry, or contagion. Anim Behav 2010;79:e1-e3
-Walusinski
O Echokinetic yawning, theory of mind, and
empathy
Augustin Morvan (1819-1897) was a contemporary of
Jean-Martin Charcot who practised medicine in rural
Brittany. A perspicacious and astute clinician, he
described three clinical pictures not previously
isolated: in 1875 the semiology of myxoedema, in 1883 the
neurological semiology of syringomyelia which he called
"paretic analgesia of the upper extremities", and finally
in 1890 the semiology of "fibrillary chorea", currently
considered a model of synaptic pathology involving
immunological damage to potassium channels and causing
(as perfectly described by Morvan) myokymia, autonomic
nervous system disturbances and agrypnia. "Fibrillary
chorea" is today known as Morvan's syndrome and linked to
limbic encephalitis.
Contemporain de Jean-Martin Charcot, Augustin Morvan
(1819-1897) exerça, lui, la médecine dans
la campagne bretonne. Perspicace et fin clinicien, il
décrivit trois tableaux cliniques non
individualisés auparavant: en 1875 la
sémiologie du myxœdème, en 1883, la
sémiologie neurologique de la syringomyélie
qu'il baptisa « paréso-analgésie
des extrémités supérieures »,
puis, en 1890, la sémiologie de « la
chorée fibrillaire », reconnue
actuellement comme un modèle de pathologie
synaptique par atteinte immunitaire de l'activité
des canaux potassiques, responsable comme l'avait
parfaitement décrit Morvan, de myokimies, de
troubles neuro-végétatifs, d'agrypnie et
apparentée à "l'encéphalite
limbique".
s'annoncent ordinairement par des
bâillements, des pandiculations,
etc...
Ce nom est le même que suffocation
utérine, vapeurs hystériques,
épilepsie utérine.
La passion hystérique est sujette à des
retours ou paroxysmes qui sont plus ou moins
fréquents, plus ou moins longs, plus ou moins
violents, accompagnés de plus ou moins
d'accidents, selon les différents sujets ou les
différentes circonstances. Ces retours sont
toujours irréguliers et ne garde aucune
période certaine; le mal est extrême tant
qu'ils durent, mais dès qu'ils sont finis, les
malades se trouvent dans un état tranquille, et
quelquefois dans un état qui ressemble à
celui d'une parfaite santé.
Ces retours s'annoncent ordinairement par des
bâillements, des pandiculations, des hoquets,
des borborygmes, des rougeurs qui montent tout à
coup au visage, accompagnés d'une chaleur vive et
bientôt suivi d'une pâleur et d'un froid
proportionné à la rougeur et à la
chaleur qui ont précédé. Les
mêmes retours finissent par des soupirs profonds et
lentement répétés; par
l'éruption de vents qui sortent de l'estomac, et
surtout par l'écoulement plus ou moins abondant
d'une humeur séreuse lymphatique et quelquefois
sanguinolente qui coule du vagin.
Combien de fois
bâillez-vous par jour ? <5 = 23,3%.. 5-10 =
22,5%.. 10-15 = 15,4%.. 15-20 = 10,8%.. >20 =
28%
Ressentez-vous des
baillements excessifs ?
52,3% = non, tant
mieux
37% = oui et je ne sais
pas pouquoi
8,9% = oui et je prends
des antidépresseurs
1,0% = oui et je prends
des anti-épileptiques
6,2% = oui et je prends
d'autres médicaments
2,3% = oui et j 'ai des
troubles neurologiques
2,3% = oui et j 'ai des
troubles hormonaux
1,4% = oui et j 'ai des
tics moteurs
1,6% = oui et j 'ai des
tocs
déclenchez-vous
facilement le bâillement d'autrui ? 74,3%
êtes-vous sensible
au bâillement d'autrui ? 68,6%
Horrobin DF.
Ideas in biomedical science:
reasons for the foundation of Medical
Hypotheses.
Med Hypotheses.
1976;2(1):29-30
"The history of science has
repeatedly shown that when hypotheses are proposed, it is
impossible to predict which will turn out to be
revolutionary and which ridiculous. The only safe
approach is to let all see the light and to let all be
discussed, experimented upon vindicated or
destroyed"
