Scientific Reason Behind Hiccups

It's easier to say you do not remember the first hiccup, because it took place probably before you were born. It is customary for the development of the human embryo have hiccups in the womb, and yet even though we experience them throughout our lives, and the reason for this action is voluntary defied explanation.

To unravel the mystery of why we hiccup - that do not serve any useful purpose is clear - they are looking at our past evolutionary scientists for clues among distant relatives in the future. One promising candidate: amphibians, in certain frogs.

And it raised the mechanics of what happens during a storm this theory. It includes a whirlwind, known in medical circles as a hiccup, a sharp contraction in the muscles used for inhalation - the diaphragm, the muscles of the chest wall and neck and others. Prey for this, at the same time, by inhibiting the muscles used during exhalation.

Here, the back of the tongue and roof of the mouth is moving to the top, followed by the closure of the clamping of the vocal cords, also known as the glottis. This last part, and the closure of the glottis, is the source of the name of the sound, "the coalition." As you are undoubtedly of direct experience, and this process does not happen just once, but repeated rhythmic manner.

It seems that the tiny frogs that appear in a similar physiological behavior.

"Halfway through the tadpole development both lungs that breathe air and gills of the water to breathe," wrote William A.. Whitelaw, a professor at the University of Calgary, in Scientific American magazine. "To breathe water, it fills the mouth with water and then close the glottis and forces the water through the gills." This procedure is like a whirlwind in many primitive air breathers, such as gar, lungfish and other amphibians that have nostrils.

Recent evidence linking hiccups in humans, these creatures are originally electric trigger a storm in the brain, according to Neil Shubin, a professor of organic biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago. The Guardian newspaper: "convulsions in membranes we have, is run hiccups by electrical signals generated in the brain stem. Brain amphibians as relating stems emit similar signals, which control the normal movement of the nostrils. Stems our brain, it inherited from the ancestors of amphibians, still boom signals strange production hiccups that are according to Shubin, basically the same phenomenon in gill breathing. "

If hiccups are the remains of the genetic code passed down from the ancestors of amphibians have, it can be true that they perform any useful function in humans, despite the continuation of the last 370 million years ago for the first of our ancestors set foot on dry land?

Christian Strauss, a scientist at the Pitié-Saltpetriere Hospital in Paris, has developed the theory that hiccupping may be a mechanism to help learn the sucking mammals, which involves a series of similar movements. Allen said package, an expert in neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania BBC while reasonable, and this theory can be difficult to prove.

Even Strauss and his colleagues can demonstrate a relationship between brain regions that control feeding, and those that lead to hiccups, the purpose of a mysterious only hiccup remains - a mystery.