Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond - Softcover

Provine, Robert R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674284135 ISBN 13: 9780674284135

Publisher: Belknap Press, 2014

Synopsis

Robert Provine boldly goes where other scientists seldom tread-in search of hiccups, coughs, yawns, sneezes, and other lowly, undignified human behaviors. Upon investigation, these instinctive acts bear the imprint of our evolutionary origins and can be uniquely valuable tools for understanding how the human brain works and what makes us different from other species. Many activities showcased in "Curious Behavior" are contagious, but none surpasses yawning in this regard-just reading the word can make one succumb. Though we often take it as a sign of sleepiness or boredom, yawning holds clues to the development of our sociality and ability to empathize with others. Its inescapable transmission reminds us that we are sometimes unaware, neurologically programmed beasts of the herd. Other neglected behaviors yield similar revelations. Tickling, we learn, may be the key to programming personhood into robots. Coughing comes in musical, medical, and social varieties. Farting and belching have import for the evolution of human speech. And prenatal behavior is offered as the strangest exhibit of all, defying postnatal logic in every way. Our earthiest acts define "Homo sapiens" as much as language, bipedalism, tool use, and other more studied characteristics. As Provine guides us through peculiarities right under our noses, he beckons us to follow with self-experiments: tickling our own feet, keeping a log of when we laugh, and attempting to suppress yawns and sneezes. Such humble investigations provide fodder for grade school science projects as well as doctoral dissertations. Small Science can yield big rewards.

About this title

Review:

Readers will enjoy the stories and find the glimpses into the neuroscience of these curious behaviors engaging. --K. S. Milar"Choice" (01/01/2013)

"Why do we yawn, tickle, laugh, cough, scratch, sneeze, hiccup, vomit, or cry? Robert Provine has investigated these and other behaviours, and the result is beautifully written and constantly surprising. He is a neuroscientist who scorns neural reductionism, and is charmingly funny, dotting his exegesis with laconic flashes of thematic silliness or amused humility. --Guardian

About the Author:

Robert R. Provine is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

About this edition

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0674284135
• ISBN 13: 9780674284135
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288