The neuroethology of spontaneous mimicry and emotional contagion in human and non-human animals

Abstract

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Auditory Contagious Yawning Is Highest Between Friends and Family Members: Support to the Emotional Bias Hypothesis

“…Our study adds to the discussion over the mechanisms underlying the social asymmetry in yawn contagion (for a critical reviews: see Adriaense et al, 2020;Palagi et al, 2020), by showing that yawn contagion is probably associated with bottom-up, rather than with top-down, selective attention. Bottom-up attention is primarily lead by the sensory perception of the eliciting stimulus whereas top-down, selective attention is a voluntary, sustained process in which a particular item is selected internally and focused upon or examined (Katsuki and Constantinidis, 2014).…”

“…This finding is in line with previous literature. Contagious yawning appears to involve brain areas that are more related to the orienting-bottom up network [temporoparietal junction (TPJ), brainstem nuclei, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPC)] than top-down related areas [frontal eye fields (FEFs), intraparietal sulcus (IPS), parietal areas; for a review: Palagi et al, 2020]. Moreover, yawn contagion is neither sensitive to the sensory cues present in the signal (auditory, visual, or audio-visual) (Arnott et al, 2009;Norscia and Palagi, 2011) nor affected by the visual perspective of the triggering stimulus (yawns in orientations of 90 • , 180 • , and 270 • are able to trigger yawning responses as frontal, 0 • yawns; Provine, 1989Provine, , 1996.…”

“…In humans, their phylogenetically closest ape species (chimpanzees: Pan paniscus; bonobos: Pan troglodytes) and the African monkey Theropithecus gelada, contagious yawning is not only present (Provine, 1986;Palagi et al, 2009;Tan et al, 2017; but see: Amici et al, 2014) but also socially modulated because the yawning response is highest when certain categories of individuals are involved (e.g., kin, group-members, dominants; Palagi et al, 2009;de Waal, 2011, 2014;Norscia and Palagi, 2011;Demuru and Palagi, 2012;Massen et al, 2012). Two main arguments have been presented to explain this social asymmetry in contagious yawning, which have been grouped into two main hypotheses: the Emotional Bias Hypothesis (EBH), linking contagious yawning to emotional transfer, and the Attentional Bias Hypothesis (ABH), which considers contagious yawning as a motor response that is subject to differences in top-down attentional processes (Palagi et al, 2020).…”

Yawn contagion in domestic pigs (Sus scrofa)

“…chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes 3 ; geladas, Theropithecus gelada 4 ; Tonkean macaques, Macaca tonkeana and Japanese macaques, M. fuscata 5 ; humans, Homo sapiens 6,7 ), spontaneous yawning is considered a plesiomorphic (ancient) trait because its basic motor pattern has been observed in a wide array of vertebrates 8 . On the other hand, contagious yawning between conspecifics has been observed so far in a relatively low number of species, which suggests that this phenomenon may have appeared more recently in vertebrate evolution 9 . In particular, the presence of yawn contagion has been found only in highly social species and seems to be linked to the type of sociality more than to the phylogenetic closeness 9 .…”

Editorial: Explicit and Implicit Emotion Processing: Neural Basis, Perceptual and Cognitive Mechanisms

“…In their study, Norscia et al investigate the possible relation between emotional contagion and (auditory) yawn contagion, a form of replication of facial display triggered by an auditory signal. The authors address the affiliation-based accounts (Palagi et al, 2020) and provide evidence supporting the contention that familiarity, gender bias, and social bond drive the rate and efficiency of contagion. The role of the contextual state in the judgment of emotional expression is also addressed by Pinilla et al, who investigate how an induced affective state can affect the judgment of the observed affective state in others, as communicated by face.…”