![]() ![]() A grainy image of Sasquatch from the Patterson-Gimlin film, which purports to show Bigfoot. Déjà vu might also come about when the brain improperly encodes a new memory, or when it misfires when establishing a sense of familiarity. Another study found that one healthy male subject experienced a strong recurrent sense of déjà vu when he took two drugs to ward off the flu. “One reason for the jarring sense that accompanies déjà vu may be the contrast between the sense of newness and the simultaneous sense of oldness-something unfamiliar should not also feel familiar,” cognitive psychologist Anne Cleary at Colorado State University told Scientific American. One study, which placed people in a virtual computer world, hints that the feeling triggers most frequently when a person encounters a place that’s similar in layout to another place he or she has visited, but doesn’t consciously recognize. What causes this eerie feeling of déjà vu? In short: No one is certain, but some ideas exist. You’ve probably had this feeling before: As something happens, you feel you’re reliving a past moment. One stage productions’ (creepy) interpretation of what déjà vu looks/feels like. A final theory is that some observations of ghosts may have been due to hallucinations caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. Another idea is that drafts may create “cold spots” thought to be signs of spirits. Infrasound vibrations can also mess with vision and make people think they are seeing things. Such rumbles can vibrate human organs and make people feel a sense of unease. One has to do with infrasound, or low-frequency sounds inaudible to humans but that storms and even household appliances can generate. Modern scientists haven’t delved into this topic all that much, but a few compelling explanations exist. And more than one-fifth of people CBS polled say they’ve seen or felt the presence of a ghost. Most women-about 56 percent-believe in ghosts. “Alright,” you might say, “I understand that yawning thing, but ghosts don’t exist.” Well, a plurality of Americans-48 percent, in fact- believe they do, according to a CBS News poll in 2005. Patrick Swayze as a ghoul in the movie “Ghost.” 2. But another newer study concluded the opposite. “A yawn is usually followed by increased movement and physiological activity, which suggests that some sort of ‘waking up’ has taken place.”Īnd why are yawns contagious? A recent study in PLoS ONE suggests they’re way of showing empathy. One hypothesis that has not (yet) been discarded: yawns “serve as a signal for our bodies to perk up, a way of making sure we stay alert,” Maria Konnikova wrote in The New Yorker. In short, yawning “fails precisely when we need it,” Dr. Counterintuitively, yawning occurs less frequently in hot weather, when air has less ability to cool the body. One is that yawning helps to cool the brain by increasing blood flow to the jaws, neck, and sinuses, and then removing heat from this blood when inhaling a big breath. Ideas abound, but none seem to hold up to scientific scrutiny. Thanks, biology-but what purpose does yawning serve? (Did you just yawn?) You can even “catch” yawns from other people, and from other animals like dogs. Reading or thinking about it makes you more likely to yawn. ![]()
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