has changed dramatically over time, is a useful point of comparison. As Dr. Brown has pointed out, back in the 1940s, sleep was just as “undefined and enigmatic” as play is today.
Rats are often cited as the optimal animal to study in exploring the neurobiology of play because they are exceptionally playful prior to rat puberty, displaying play behaviors before they are even weaned. Although rats that are systematically bred for certain physiological and/or behavioral traits demonstrate differing degrees of playfulness, postnatal experiences have been shown to significantly influence rat play as well. The amount of licking and grooming rats received has been correlated to less fearful rat pups, and although extended separation from the mother rat has negative impact on pup behavior, consistent and brief daily separations from the mother rat are linked to increased play behavior. Interestingly, these brief separations are also connected to an increase in licking and grooming by the mother rat, creating a self‐reinforcing system.
Although there is still much to be learned about the neuroscience behind human play, it has been the subject of research for over half a century, building on the foundation of understanding of animal behaviors. Dr. Joe Frost wrote at length on the subject beginning in the 1970s, and more recently Dr. Jane McGonigal has written and spoken extensively about the neuroscience behind video games. More research is needed to better understand the connections between play and neural activity. What is clear is that playful learning experiences that are characterized by joy, meaning, active engagement, repetition, and social connection are associated with increased dopamine levels, stimulating networks in the brain associated with memory, metacognition, analogical thinking, creating insight, motivation, and reward.13
The science about mirror neurons reinforces the idea of play benefiting our brains, even as the popular beliefs about mirror neurons may have gotten out a bit ahead of what the science has fully determined. Much of what is known is based largely on research involving adult monkeys, where mirror neurons have been documented firing both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron “mirrors” the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Some researchers believe this explains how we learn to generate our own actions and how we monitor and interpret the actions of others, and other researchers maintain that it could point to the neural basis of empathy. This connects to play because shared joy unites us, supporting attunement and a sense of understanding that enable us to collaboratively adapt to complex situations. Looked at from this perspective, play's impact on the brain is essential not just to our survival but also to our potential to collectively thrive.
Finally, Alison Gopnik, author of The Scientist in the Crib, has been a strong advocate for considering how early human development might influence models of machine intelligence, with an emphasis on curiosity as a critical part of the process.14 In her more recent book, The Gardener and the Carpenter, Gopnik unpacks the role of parents and caregivers in supporting this curiosity and the importance of creating the conditions that encourage children's brains to do the deeply complex work of creating causal models. As we will explore deeper in this book, among the most important of these conditions is the opportunity to play and make discoveries that are free from expectations, filled with magic, and disconnected from any apparent purpose.
* * *
Phew that was a lot! For those of you who appreciate the age‐old teaching strategy of “review and summarize,” here you go:
Play is tricky to define to everyone’s satisfaction, in part because we all have a personal experience of some kind and in part because it is expressed and offers value in so many different ways. (Plus some of us have really strong feelings about it!) One way to understand play is to observe and consider all the ways play shows up in your own life, as well as all the ways we use the words play and playing and player in our day‐to‐day lives. It's also important to connect the ubiquitous presence of play with the different feelings we get from it. And that's what the rest of this book is about.
One critical aspect of play is volition; individuals get to choose what and how they play. Volition is not equivalent to lack of rules or structures. It's simply a recognition that we want to choose when to jump in and play with each other. We don't want to be forced or compelled. And in our experience, creating the conditions for children to be inspired to play is a powerful lever to achieve all the benefits play offers (see next bullet).
Scientific research has identified a wide array of benefits and developmental impacts from play, some obvious like physical activity and others not so obvious, such as “fertilizing brain activity.” Play is one of those subjects about which science has a lot more to learn. How fun!
The debate between the relative value of structured and unstructured play might be getting in our way, if what we care about is making more play happen. And now you have to read the rest of the book to really understand more about that.
Let's play on!
Notes
1 1 Suits, Bernard. The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. Broadview Press, 2005 (first published 1978), 41.
2 2 Sutton‐Smith, Brian. The Ambiguity of Play. Harvard University Press, 2001, 198.
3 3 Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens. Random House, 1938, 13.
4 4 Montessori, Maria. Child's Instinct to Work. AMI Communications, 1973.
5 5 Parten, Mildred B. “Social Participation among Pre‐School Children.” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 27 (1932): 243–269.
6 6 Brown, Stuart. Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. Penguin Group, 2009.
7 7 “Discovering the Importance of Play through Personal Histories and Brain Images An Interview with Stuart L. Brown.” American Journal of Play 1, 4 (2009): 399–412.
8 8 Evans, John, and Anthony Pellegrini. “Surplus Energy Theory: An Enduring but Inadequate Justification for School Break‐Time.” Educational Review 49, 3 (1997): 229–236.
9 9 McLeod, S. A. “Jean Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development: Background and Key Concepts of Piaget's Theory.” Simply Psychology (June 6, 2018).
10 10 Sutton‐Smith, Brian. The Ambiguity of Play. Harvard University Press, 2001.
11 11 Gray, P. Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self‐Reliant, and Better Students for Life. Basic Books/Hachette Book Group, 2013.
12 12 London, Rebecca. Rethinking
