A 27-year-old man with no known health problems was in his car when he let out a long yawn. Right afterward, the right side of his face stopped working properly. His right ear felt full, his cheek and tongue went numb, and he could not close his right eye.
Doctors in Italy concluded that the yawn had set off a rare injury called alternobaric facial palsy, in which a sudden pressure imbalance in the middle ear temporarily knocks out the facial nerve. The case, from specialists at the University of Verona and the University of Padua, was published online in CRANIO in September 2025 and appears in the journal's May 2026 issue.
