Available:*
Library | Collection | Collection | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Beale Memorial Library (Kern Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Adult Non-Fiction | 152.32 PRO | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Visalia Library (Tulare Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Non-Fiction Area | 152.32 PRO | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Woodward Park Library (Fresno Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Non-fiction Area | 152.32 PRO | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
Robert R. Provine is a professor of neurobiology & psychology at the University of Maryland. His work has been featured in media around the world, including "The New York Times," "The Washington Post," "The Wall Street Journal," & "Good Morning America."
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Neuroscientist Provine delighted the public with Laughter: A Scientific Investigation. His new book, which is about many instinctive behaviors, could pack a similar punch. We are clearly captivated by our baser instincts, which science has overlooked. Provine "redresses historic debts" by focusing on such bodily behaviors as "Farting and Belching." Tickling, for example, may tap into a neural mechanism for distinguishing ourselves from others, he says (i.e., "you can't tickle yourself"). Contagious yawns-affecting 55% of those watching yawn videos-may reflect how our brains replicate observed behavior to create empathy. Further evidence for this is that autistic children, who lack empathy, can be immune to contagious yawning. As such areas are understudied, the book by necessity traffics in many hypotheticals, and dutifully cites some research with obvious conclusions, like "bored people really do yawn a lot." But there is much to intrigue both general and serious readers, from a passage on herring farts calling fish together, to a study finding men less attracted to women whose tears they have sniffed ("Tear jerkers are not ideal date movies"). The book provides a not-yet definitive, but often fascinating, take on our most curious behaviors. 27 line illus. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
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. "My reputation as a yawn sleuth," he writes, "has conferred a curious kind of charisma - I've become a yawn stimulus." A major theme of the book is contagion. Why is even reading about yawning likely to make you yawn? (Are you yawning yet? Yawn.) Provine also suspects that many of the behaviours he studies are means of communication. "Tears resolve ambiguity of facial expression", and even "breathing is grammatical" - coughing or laughing generally occur at syntactic breaks in speech. Provine also considers farts as "buttspeak", using the example of the celebrated French fartiste Le Petomane to ask why we didn't evolve the faculty of speech via the anus, giving a whole new meaning to talking out of one's arse. Steven Poole - Steven Poole 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. - Steven Poole.
Choice Review
Yawning, hiccupping, sneezing, belching, and flatulence are just a few of the topics Provine (psychology and neuroscience, Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County) tackles in this unique volume. He characterizes his work as "sidewalk neuroscience," that is, observations and demonstrations that can be done by anyone without fancy equipment. The funniest chapter is definitely the one on belching and flatulence and how those behaviors relate to human vocal communication. (The author includes an example of a Moulin Rouge performer in the late 19th century who could render "La Marseillaise" through his anus.) The chapter on yawning makes a powerful case for its contagion, but this reviewer did not yawn once while reading it--but she yawned quite a bit while reading the chapter on crying. So although the topics are interesting, and illustrated sometimes with compelling anecdotes, ultimately much of the "science" is not very convincing. Results of scientific experiments are intermingled with anecdotal observation and given the same weight. The most interesting, and most scientifically rigorous, chapter is on prenatal behavior, a subject that lacks reliance on storytelling. All this said, readers will enjoy the stories and find the glimpses into the neuroscience of these curious behaviors engaging. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers. K. S. Milar Earlham College
Library Journal Review
More than ten years after his Laughter: A Scientific Investigation, Provine (psychology & neuroscience, Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore Cnty.) revisits the human phenomenon of laughing and explores 12 other curiosities of human life, including yawning, vocal crying, emotional tearing, the whites of our eyes-did you ever stop to note that only we humans have that sclera-coughing, sneezing, hiccupping, nausea, tickling, itching/scratching, farting and belching, and, at the end, prenatal behavior, one of the trickiest of subjects to study: regrettably we cannot "consult embryos for guidance" about their behavior. Do you think that each of the behaviors covered here is merely a randomly eccentric human quirk? Think again. For each of these odd functions, Provine dexterously combines wit, a fine way with words, and precise scientific context, to show us the evolutionary reason behind it. For example, emotional tears are not simply a signal of sadness. Evolutionarily, they must have served a purpose: they add "nuance and range" to our facial expressions, promoting the powers of "Homo sapiens as a social species." VERDICT This is a delectable presentation for all who love the territory between pop and hardcore science writing. Highly recommended.-Margaret Heilbrun, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| introduction | p. 1 |
| 1 yawning | p. 12 |
| 2 laughing | p. 39 |
| 3 vocal crying | p. 65 |
| 4 emotional tearing | p. 79 |
| 5 whites of the eyes | p. 94 |
| 6 coughing | p. 104 |
| 7 sneezing | p. 116 |
| 8 hiccupping | p. 129 |
| 9 vomiting and nausea | p. 147 |
| 10 tickling | p. 164 |
| 11 itching and scratching | p. 176 |
| 12 farting and belching | p. 189 |
| 13 prenatal behavior | p. 201 |
| appendix: the behavioral keyboard | p. 217 |
| notes | p. 221 |
| references | p. 241 |
| acknowledgments | p. 263 |
| index | p. 265 |