Scientific Colloquium
April 5, 2013


"Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond"

Robert Provine boldly goes where other scientists seldom tread--in search of yawns, laughs, hiccups, coughs, 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. "Sidewalk neuroscience" is the name Provine gives to the exploration of serious scientific questions using simple observations of daily life. Such humble investigations provide fodder for grade school science projects as well as doctoral dissertations. This is the kind of "small science" that engages children, as it did the author, who started his scientific career as a middle-school student observing the belts of Jupiter with a homemade telescope from his backyard in Tulsa. Where else can you playfully engage such questions as why we evolved the capacity to speak through our mouth instead of our butt? Goddard even earned a place in this research, motivating research about tickle and how to program personhood into computers. The presentation is based on Provine's award winning book, Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond, that was the subject of a recent broadcast of NPR Talk of the Nation/Science Friday.
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