Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine. Today. We are going
to talk about the biology
psychology and utility of play.
Play is something that normally we associate with children's
games and indeed, with being a child much of our childhood development centers around
Whether or not it's organized, play or spontaneous
play, but as adults, we also need to play. And
today, I'm going to talk about what I like to refer to as the power of play. The
power of play resides, in plays ability to change our nervous
system for the better so that we can perform many activities. Not just play activities, better. Play can also function as a way to explore new ways of being in different scenarios.
In work and relationships in settings of all kind and indeed also in the relationship to oneself.
In fact, we are going to explore how assuming different identities during the same game of play, or the same forms of play, has been shown to be immensely powerful for allowing
people to engage, in more creative thinking, and dynamic thinking, and indeed, to become better leaders and more effective workers, and students and
Learners and happier
people. I'm
also going to cover some data that shows that
Learning to play properly, can enhance one's ability to focus, and is an
active area of research for treatment of things like ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, just as a little sneak preview of where that's headed
children, who do
not access enough play during certain stages of
childhood are more prone to develop ADHD. The good news is all of us regardless of whether or not we
have ADHD or not whether or not we had ample access to play during childhood or not.
Not
can engage and grow. The neural circuits that allow for
this incredible power of play? And this can be done again at any stage of Life. Today. We're going to talk about the protocols, the science. We review all of that and I promise you'll come away with a lot of knowledge whether or not you're a parent, whether not you're a child, whether or not you're a person of any age, you're going to have tools and knowledge that will benefit you
before we begin. I want to share with you the results of what I think to be an extremely exciting, and certainly an
actionable study.
Was just published in the journal, scientific reports. This is an excellent journal Nature, Press Journal
peer-reviewed etcetera and the finding center
around what sorts of devices. We happen to be reading on and accessing information on and how that's impacting our physiology and our capacity to learn one of the more frequent
questions. I get is what are all these devices, phones, tablets, computers, Video Games, Etc, doing to our brains. And finally there's some good
peer reviewed data to
Look at that and to address it directly
this study first author
honma h0n Ma honma at all is
entitled reading on a smartphone effects sigh generation. That's s. IG H Sy generation brain activity and comprehension and to just summarize what they found. They ran a study on 34, healthy individuals and had them either read material on a smartphone
or on regular printed paper or a book.
And what they found is that comprehension on devices. In particular smartphones is much poorer, much worse
than it is when one reads on actual paper.
Now some of you may experience this yourselves now, they compared smartphones with paper and what they found was that when they looked at people's breathing, the normal patterns of breathing that people were engaging in, did not differ
between people reading on a smart phone or reading from
paper.
However, one particular feature of breathing did differ
and that particular feature is what we call physiological sighs. I've talked a lot about physiological size on this podcast. And on social
media. We had a terrific, guest Professor Jack Feldman from University of California, Los Angeles, who is a
world expert in breathing and respiration, and it's impacts on the brain and how brain controls breathing and
respiration. And what you can learn from that episode, or I'll just tell you again right now, is that every five minutes or so whether or not we are asleep or awake?
We do what's called a physiological PSI,
which is a big
deep, inhale often a double
inhale, followed by a long, exhale, and go something like this. Now, you might think. Oh, I never breed like that. But you do,
unless there's something severely wrong with your brain stem every five minutes or
so. You do one of these physiological size which
reopens all the little hundreds of millions of sacks in your lungs called the a viola that bring in more oxygen as a
consequence of that big deep double inhale.
And then you are able to Exhale carbon dioxide offload, carbon dioxide through that long. Exhale. I've also encourage people to use the physiological side. Deliberately not just spontaneously, as a way to reduce their stress quickly. And indeed, my lab works on physiological size and has been exploring this and they're quite effective in reducing our stress, very fast.
Reading on a smartphone seems to suppress physiological. Sighing people aren't aware that it's happening, but it's happening. Some people have talked about so called email apnea.
Which is the fact that people
hold their breath while they email or while they text. And indeed many
people do that. This is distinct from email or texting. Apnea. What's Happening Here is people are reading on the phone and for whatever reason and I'll talk about what the likely reason is, but for whatever reason, they're suppressing their sighing. And as a consequence, the brain is not getting
enough oxygen and is not offloading enough carbon dioxide. And
another Finding in this study. Was that the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that's involved in focus and attention and learn.
Becomes hyperactive in a kind of desperate attempt to focus all of this can be summarized by saying if you happen to read on a device. Whether
it's a tablet, a standard, computer
screen of any kind, but in particular on a smartphone, regardless of how small or large that
smartphone screen is, you want to remind yourself to engage in these physiological size fairly regularly and it might even be better to just read the most or at least the key issues are in things that you're trying.
To learn about the key information from paper either books or printed out material of some other sort. What's the underlying mechanism here?
Well, one of the reasons I like to study so much is that it brings together. Two
of my Laboratories in my particular interest in
Neuroscience, which is, how does our
visual system and the aperture. Meaning the size of
our visual window relate
to our so-called autonomic function or our internal State. And
basically What's Happening Here is as any of us bring our visual window in more.
Narrowly as we contract our visual window, which is exactly what happens when we're looking at a little smartphone in front of us.
It seems to suppress the breathing apparatus because we know that physiological size are controlled by a
specific set of neurons in the brain. Stem called a pair of facial nucleus discovered by dr. Jack Feldman.
And so there must be a mechanism, whereby when we tighten our visual window. We somehow we don't know yet how this happens, but somehow,
suppress, the activity of these neurons in the pair facial, nucleus that generate these physiological sizes.
So again, you have to
Two choices or I suppose you have many choices. But two main choices
to contend with this new information,
one is
that you remind yourself to engage in deep breathing and in particular physiological, size, every five minutes or so, while reading anything or texting on your smartphone.
The other would be again, if there's material that you really need to learn
for sake of regurgitation later, or for
something particularly important, try and read that from either a
larger screen or even better would be from printed, materials or books.
Another reason. I bring all that.
Is that it relates to a larger theme, which is that I
get many, many questions about ADHD in about people's challenges with focus and much of what we're told these days is that
we are challenged with Focus because of the hundreds of videos that we can see streaming By Us in any moment on our phone, which probably is true. The fact that the information that we're reading on the internet and on our phones is emotionally disturbing or distressing in some way and that probably is true as well. In many cases. This study really points to the fact that
Independent of the information that we are looking at or consuming independent whether or not it's movies or texts or anything of that sort, the mere size of the window, the aperture, the screen that we are looking at is
also strongly impacting, our ability to learn and remember information. So
broaden that visual window, print things out. Look at a book. I didn't design the system. I always say, you know,
however our visual system and respiratory system happened to evolve, I wasn't consulted.
In Phase, this is just simply how your brain circuits work. So if you want to learn things widen that visual window and even better, print things out, pick up a book or read on a tablet, even but try and make that tablet larger than a smartphone screen size before we begin our discussion about the power of play. I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to
bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general
public in keeping.
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Now, in researching this episode, I thought that I was going to come across a bunch of papers that say, this brain area connects, to that brain area, which controls play and animals and their similar areas in babies and in
adults, and indeed, that's true. And we will talk about brain circuitry, but I think more importantly is to understand. What is the utility of play? Why do we play? When where younger? Why do we
tend to play less as we get older? And what in the world is play for? Some of us would be categorized as more?
Playful, I'm
sure that you know,
people like this maybe you are like this people that can
walk into a room, a social setting of any kind and they seem to already kind of have a playful. Maybe even a
mischievous quality about them will talk about Mischief a little bit later,
but this overlooked at an environment or a social setting as an opportunity for different
kinds of Novel interactions
other people. And I'd probably put myself into this category. If I walk into a novel environment. I tend to be more in the mode of just assessing what the environment is like. I'm not a
particularly special.
On taneous, Lee playful person. Although, around certain individuals. I might be
more spontaneously playful. We are all on a Continuum of this kind of seriousness to playful nature. Turns out that all young
animals, including humans, have
more playfulness and tend to engage in more spontaneous play in their earlier years than
in their later years and therein lies a very interesting portal to understanding what the utility what the purpose of play is.
First of all, I want to lay down a couple of
Of key facts about play that
point to the fact that play is not just about
games. Play is about much, much more and play. And in particular how we played as a child and still how we can play. As adults is
really how we test and
expand our potential roles in all kinds of interactions.
One of the most important interesting and
surprising features of play that, I'd like everyone to know about
is that it is homeostatic, lie regulated.
Some of you are familiar with the term. Homeostasis homeostasis is just this aspect of
biological systems to try and remain in Balance, you know, if you
stay awake for a long period of time, you tend to want to sleep for a long period of time. If you slept for a long period of time and you're very rested, then you tend to be
very energetic the next day. And of course, I know people out there will
immediately say, oh well if I sleep too long, then I'm
groggy the next day, of course, there are exceptions,
but in general, sleep
and wakefulness are in homeostatic balance thirst and water consumption.
Anar in homeostatic balance. If you don't drink any fluids for a while you tend to get more thirsty, you drink fluids and your thirst tends to diminish
likewise with food
likewise, with most all motivated. Behaviors.
Well, one of the most important discoveries of the last century was largely. The work of a guy named jaak panksepp. No, it's
not Jack. Its jaak panksepp. Who really
pioneered this understanding of the biology of play and
relating that to the psychology of play in animals and
humans. He's considered kind of
luminary.
In the field of play and what a great title to have, right? If you could have a title and be a scientific luminary, you might as well be the
play guy. In fact, he was known and I'll get into this later as to why but he was known
as the rat Tickler because he tickled rats and he actually found that rodents and animals of any kind generate laughter in response to tickling. And in fact, they don't have the capacity to tickle themselves. Something we'll also talk about why that is
and he was called the rat Tickler, but then he discovered that many species of animals.
And
engage in laughter in response
to tickling and they tickle each other and the reason you don't hear them laughing. No, you can't hear
your dog laughing that isn't laughing at something. Else
is that most animals besides
humans laugh at kind of ultrasonic levels of auditory output, meaning the frequencies of sound or just too high for you to hear but with the appropriate devices,
he was able with
his colleagues to isolate the so called the rat laughter. And then turns out there's kitten laughter. And there's puppy laughter. And of course, there's human laughter.
Yuck panksepp was a very interesting and pioneering person in this field
and he also
discovered that play is homeostatic. Lie regulated, meaning, if animals including children are restricted from playing for a certain amount of time. They will play more. When given the opportunity in the same way. That if I
food restrict you for a long period of time, you will eat more when you are finally allowed to eat, and this is important
because it moves this thing that we call play from the dimension of higher order, functions or things that evolve.
Moved recently,
you know that are really kind of at the
front edge of human evolution
deeper into the circuitry of the brain. Whereby. We say the brainstem the kind of ancient parts of the brain are going to be involved. And in fact, that's the case. As
we're going to learn later in the podcast play is generated through the connectivity of many brain areas, but one of the key brain areas is an area called PA G. Periaqueductal gray. The
Aqueduct all gray is a brain stem area. So it's
pretty far back as the brain kind of transitions into the spinal cord and it's rich
with neurons that make an endogenous opioid. So these are not the kinds of opioids
that are causing the opioid
crisis. These are
neurons that you and I all have that release endogenous meaning self-made or biologically made opioids. They go by names like and careful in and things of that sort
play evokes, small amounts.
Of opioid release into the
system. They kind of dope you up a little bit.
Not so much
as one would see if one were to take exoticness opioids. In fact, exoticness opioids. As we now know, are potentially very hazardous, highly High addiction potential High, overdose potential they cause all sorts of problems. Yes, there are clinical uses for them, but they're causing a lot of problems nowadays, but these endogenous opioids
are released in children and adults, anytime
we engage in play
and that turns out to be a very important.
Chemical State because there's something about having
an abundance of these endogenous opioids, released into the brain
that allows other areas of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex, the area of the front, that's responsible for what we call
Executive function, executive function is the ability to make
predictions to
assess. Contingencies. Like, if I do this, then that happens if I do that, then that
happens. Well, prefrontal cortex is often seen as a kind of rigid
executive of the whole brain.
That's one way to view it, but probably a better way to view it. Is that the
The frontal cortex Works in concert with these other more primitive circuitry's. And when the periaqueductal
gray, releases these endogenous opioids during play.
The, prefrontal cortex doesn't get stupid. It actually gets smarter. It develops the ability to take on different roles and explore different contingencies, and we're going to talk about
roleplay later in different contexts.
And what we will find is that so much of play is really about exploring things in a way.
That feel safe enough to explore,
right? This is not what happens when we drive down the street or when we bike down the
street, when we are headed to work
commuting on our bicycle or walking or driving, we tend to be very linear and we've tend to be very goal-directed. We're not going to just take a new Street just because we're not going to be spontaneously riding in the middle of the road and then on the sidewalk in them back and forth. Although I can remember, as a kid. I was doing some of that, I like to jump off curb cuts when I was a kid and then eventually I graduated and sorry to the cyclists, but I graduated to skateboarding and then I looked on
And you're always kind of exploring
terrain. But, you know, as I got older, actually, I
find myself becoming much more linear. I just don't play with my commute very much. It's really just about getting to work. And then working,
when endogenous
opioids are in our system. When we were in this mode of play
the, prefrontal cortex starts seeing and exploring many, more
possibilities of how we interact with our
environment with others and the roles that we can assume for ourselves. And so we're going to dissect one by one the different aspects of
Like role play, social play individual, Play
Imaginary play competitive play, their enormous number of dimensions of play. And by the end of this episode, we're going to arrive at a very key feature. The key feature is one that's called your personal play identity.
All of us have what we call a personal play identity.
This personal play identity was laid down during development and it is the identity that you assume in playful scenarios. And it is the identity that
you adopt in
non playful scenarios.
Great news, is that your personal play identity is
plastic throughout your entire life span. You can adjust your personal play identity in ways that will benefit you
in work and relationships, and your
overall level of Happiness. We will discuss protocols and ways to do that, but I do want to
give a nod to the
late Jack. Yeah, excuse me. Yok panksepp, the
rat Tickler. And I also want to just give a nod to play generally as we move forward in the discussion, what I'd love for everyone to do.
Is to stop thinking about play as just a child activity, not just a sport related activity, but really as an
exploration in contingencies
again, it's an exploration of. If I do, a, what happens. If I do, B? What happens if someone else takes on Behavior or
attitude, see, what am I going to do?
And play is really where we can expand our
catalog of potential outcomes,
and it can be enormously.
Teaching and indeed, as we'll talk about the tinkerers of the world, the true creatives. The people that build incredible Technologies and art and also they just
have incredibly Rich emotional and intellectual and social lives. All have a strong element of play. And so today, I hope to convince you of some protocols that will allow you to expand your various roles in life through the portal of play.
So we establish that play is homeostatic,
meaning, we all need
to do it. Many of us including myself.
I haven't played that much as adult, all pretty busy. Number of us are stressed. We got a lot to do in life.
But as children, most all of
us engage in a lot of play. And in looking
at the way that very young children and especially
toddlers play, we can learn a lot
because it reveals the fundamental Rules by which the
toddler brain interacts with the world.
Now, one of the key things
about the baby brain, is that the baby brain somehow
Knows that it can't do everything in the world. Right? If a
baby needs something it generally will
cry or
make some sort of vocalization or some sort of facial expression or combination of those and the caretaker. Whoever that may be will provide it. This is an ancient hardwired mechanism, whereby
the so-called autonomic nervous system that generates stress will create this kind of whining
and discomfort may be arriving. Maybe the baby gets kind of red in the face and the caretaker delivers some thing based on.
Good. Guess of what that baby
needs. So maybe it's breast milk. Maybe it's bottle milk. Maybe it's a diaper change. Maybe
it's to be warmed up. If the baby is cold. Maybe it's to be cool down if the baby's too warm, maybe if the baby's in its little onesie thing. It's feeling restricted and just wants to move in. They'll get taken out of their, their Kerber, their stroller, or whatever it is and allow
to stretch out on the floor.
Remember the baby doesn't know exactly what it needs. It only knows the state of discomfort.
And of course, we don't know exactly what babies and toddlers are thinking.
Because they can't express themselves with language yet. But what's key to understand is the rule or the contingency that is set up in that scenario and that
scenario the child feels some discomfort, expresses that discomfort verbally or through a facial expression or both and then some Force some person from the outside world resolves it. And so the very young baby and
indeed many children up to certain
ages and let's confess many adults.
Are not able to meet or adjust their internal states of stress. And so they look to things outside of them. That's the first rule. The fundamental rule that we all learn. When we come into life that when in a state of
discomfort to look
outside, our immediate
biology, beyond the confines of our skin and find a solution.
Simple water for
adults. It might be sip of alcohol, right? Probably, not the best tool to relieve stress, but that's one that many people do in fact, engage in for the baby. That's hungry. The bottle milk comes from the outside, as we
We gain more proficiency and moving through life and we can get things for ourselves. We still often bring things from the external World in to resolve this.
What I'm calling autonomic disc discomfort or autonomic dysregulation.
That's not a game. But that's a rule. As we advance from infant to toddler. We start to think more in terms of where we are and what we own
relative to what's out there in the
world. And now in the world of child psychology. There's a somewhat famous poem that was written by a
research child psychologist. His name was Burton white and he
wrote a poem called the toddler's Creed. The toddler's Creed defines. Well what the rules and contingencies
Of
play are in very young children and it reveals to us just how narrow
and limited their worldview
is and how self-centered their
world is. So the toddler's Creed read quickly
because I don't want to take up too much time with
this is if I want it,
it's mine. If I give it to
you and change my mind,
later. It's mine for anyone that's played with a toddler. You can imagine this your mind
if I can take it away from you. It's mine. If I had a little while
ago, it's mine. If
we are building something.
Together. All the pieces are mine. If it looks just like mine. It's mine. If it's
mine. It will never belong to anyone else no matter what.
And of course, as we hear this sounds quite awful, right? And yet this is actually a reflection of what a healthy
toddler would think about the world
that the objects and things. And even the people in the world
are theirs, that they are actually possessions that belong to them.
Now, of course, some people never actually transition Beyond this stage of
moral and
Development and there are indeed some adults that fit the toddler's Creed and you're welcome to share this with
them. If ever you think that it might be of benefit to their self reflection.
But in all seriousness, Burton White's, toddlers Creed is really grounded in this transition from when we are infants, and we have to have things delivered to us to the point where we are toddlers and we can access things in the world. But we tend to assume that they are all ours. And then the next
stage is the really key.
Stage, as it relates to play because in the next stage of development is where
young children start to interact with other children. And there is an exchange and a possession, and then a letting go of certain things,
learning that not everything is yours. And that the entire world is not about, you is
one of the key,
contingencies, that is established during play.
It's one of the key ways in which children go from being very self-centered and basically unable to engage
with other kids for very long without some sort of eruption of
Crying and some sort of Battle of, you know, kind of push, pull over an
object to things like sharing
and things like cooperative
play. So as we transition from forms of play that are all about the self that
are all me. Me me me me, the toddler's Creed 2 forms of Play that involve
some discomfort in assuming roles that maybe we
don't want and not getting what we want.
It's really an opportunity for the brain. To start to explore different
roles that people take how they work, as individuals, and as pairs.
And in larger
groups and to do that in a low stakes environment,
right? You wouldn't want this to be worked out on the battlefield or when searching for food or in
some high-stakes environment, where the survival of the
species was important. It appears that these circuitry's foreplay
evolved. So that rules and contingencies around who's most important whether or not the group is important whether or not individuals are going to be leaders or followers
Etc that can be explored in a low stakes
environment.
Now, there are hundreds of different types of play and
hundreds of different types of contingency testing. But the
key theme Here is that play allows children
and adults for that matter,
to explore different outcomes in the kind of low stakes environment. If you're playing a board game or a card game, you might get really into that game. But unless there's a lot of money on the table so to speak or you're really playing for something important or unless your ego is
swollen way out of proportion to reality. If
you lose, you might not feel good about it, but it's truly not the
Of the world. And if you win, you might feel really good about it, but you're not really
incredible. You were just incredible in that particular situation for. That particular moment. It doesn't really transform the rest of your life, unless that game is of a particular type for sport, for instance. We'll talk about sport later.
So the key theme Here is that play is contingency testing, play is contingency,
testing under conditions, where the stakes are sufficiently
low, that individuals should feel comfortable assuming different.
Even rolls that they're not entirely comfortable
with in their outside life
and that all relates again to the release of these endogenous opioids. In
this brain Center periaqueductal Gray and
the way that it allows the prefrontal cortex in a very direct way. I mean,
truly it allows it in a biological way to
expand the number of operations that it can run and start thinking about well, okay. Normally I'm kind of a loner and I like to read and work and, and, you know, hang out alone may be in play alone, but
You, okay? I'll play a board game or a game of
tennis where I have a partner and we're going to play as partners against two other people. Okay, that's
a little uncomfortable. But I'll do it. And in doing that you discover certain ways in which you are proficient and certain ways in which you are less proficient,
you discover that the other person actually
tends to cheat a little bit or the other person is extremely
rigid about the rules or maybe it was extremely rigid about the way they organize their pieces on the board or you're crossing the line into your side of the tennis court.
There are all sorts of things that we learn.
These rather
low stakes scenarios. That's the key theme here.
So before I continue, I just want to point to a tool that anyone can use, but in particular, the less playful of the group
and I would put myself into this category
and I'm not somebody who really engages
in spontaneous play. I enjoy sports. I enjoy
exercise but that is distinct from play because the
Sports and exercise that I engage in, I take pretty
seriously. They're not low stakes for me.
I put actually put a lot of importance on them. She has I'm saying all this I probably should put a
of less importance on them and have a little more fun with those. And yet
what I'm about to tell you is that anyone and everyone can benefit from engaging in a bit more of this
playful mindset. The
playful mindset is not necessarily about smiling and jumping around or being silly. That's not it at all. It's not the
Tigger character
from Winnie, the Pooh necessarily. It could be but it's really about allowing yourself to expand the number of
Comes that you're willing to entertain and to think about how you relate to those different outcomes.
So what this means is putting yourself into scenarios where you might not be the top performer, right? Playing a game that you're not really that good at. I had this experience recently friends that like to play cards.
They like to do some low stakes gambling. This is not an illegal gambling ring, they play for trivial things and
I generally
don't buy into the game. I generally don't play mostly because they end up winning and taking whatever it is that I have.
But in the mode of assuming a more playful spirit, the idea would be, well, if the stakes are low enough, then to play simply for the sake of playing, because there's something to learn
there about the other people in the group and
about oneself. And how one reacts to things,
like someone who's clearly trying to take everybody's money, or
somebody who is clearly trying to cheat or somebody who's clearly
very, very rigid about every Last Detail including how the cards are dealt inch.
All right, there is learning in this exploration. And that is at a biological level. The prefrontal cortex starting to entertain different possibilities, starting to entertain different outcomes in
this low stakes way. And if you
think about it, that's not something that we allow
ourselves to do very often,
even if we listen to new forms of
music or we go see new art or new
movies, those are new experiences, but that's not us making new
predictions about what's going to happen next. It's not the brain working to figure out.
Out new possibilities
and so you can immediately see how just a small increase in your willingness to put yourself into conditions, where you don't understand all the rules, perhaps or you're not super
proficient at something.
But you enter it because it is
low stakes and
because there is information to learn about yourself and others could start to open up
these, prefrontal cortex circuits, and
when I say open up, I don't mean
that. Literally, there's an opening in your
skull. What I mean? Is that your prefrontal cortex can work in very rigid
ways.
Meaning if a then B, if I go down this Street, turn left and go that way to work. It is fast. If I go down the other street, it's slow. If there's a traffic jam there. I'm going to go there
but it's starting to explore
different possibilities. And there
are very very few opportunities
in life to explore contingencies in this low stakes way such that it engages a neural plasticity, the prefrontal cortex. So
play is powerful at making your prefrontal cortex more plastic more able to change in response to experience but not just during
The period of play but in all scenarios
because you get one. Prefrontal cortex. You don't get a prefrontal cortex, just foreplay, you get a, prefrontal cortex that engages in everything.
So going forward. I will layer on some more concrete aspects of tools. But for now if you're somebody that doesn't consider yourself particularly playful consider and maybe even gauge in just a little bit of play in some way that is of discomfort to you with the understanding that is increasing,
your prefrontal cortical plasticity.
Another really interesting and important aspect of play
is so called play postures.
These are seen in animals and these are seen in humans. And
for those of you that are watching
this podcast on YouTube. I'll do my best to adopt them here. For those of you that are
listening, you'll just have to imagine them in your mind's eye,
but jaak panksepp and indeed Darwin himself study these
play, postures that all animals engage in
perhaps the most familiar. One
is seen in dogs and
In
wolves where they will lower their head to the ground and they'll put their paws out in front of them. And they will make eye contact with another typically, dog, or wolf to so-called call the play. Now, when they do this posture, it's obvious
that they're lowering themselves. They're not in an aggressive stance because they're lowering their head. And this is
universally known among
canines as play posture or
some famous videos online. You can look these up of dogs actually doing this with
bears that they are confronted with.
Bears at least in these videos in exchange also lowering their head. And there you see
bear dog playful interactions. Now, you always have to be cautious with bears in general. I would say you have to be cautious with bears,
but this speaks to the universality of this
bowing. The sort of the what some people call the puppy, Bauer, the play Bal that dogs do.
Turns out that humans do this as well. Although, in a different
form. I'm sure there are some that go into the down dog, plank posture. But more
Really when humans want
to play, they will do a subtle or not. So subtle. Head tilt, the head tilt with eyes open is considered the universal
head and facial expression posture of play in humans.
So, when two people see, one another, if
they are aggressive towards one another, they will seem certain facial expressions and postures. But if they're feeling playful
towards one another often times, they'll tip their head to the side just a little bit and they'll open their eyes. They might even raise their eyebrows briefly. This has been seen again and again and again, another hard.
To wired feature of so-called play. Postures is what's called Soft eyes when animals are aggressive. Or when they're sad. They tend to
reduce the size of their eye openings by
basically making their eyelids closer together somewhat, but keeping their eyes together in particular. For aggression. They'll bring their eyes towards what we call a vergence eye movement. Bring it towards the center that actually Narrows the the aperture of the visual
field. When people are animals, want to engage in play, they tend to open their eyelids somewhat.
And they tend to purse their lips just a little bit. So it's not like drawing reversing your lips. Like this. It's person their lips, the open, their eyes, a little bit, and they'll
often do the head tilt as well. Sometimes with a little bit of a smile. These are
reflexive. These are not trained up children. Do this adults, do this dogs wolves. Do this, even certain birds will do this. Most
birds have eyes on the side of their heads, but they do a sort of form of this soft eyes approach and certainly in Raptors. You see a softening of the eyes and indeed Raptors like Hawks and eagles. They actually do have a certain form of play.
But only early in life,
the other thing that we see during player what are called, partial postures, partial postures are a kind of play
enactment of postures that would otherwise be threatening. So
a partial posture
that we see during play in animals and humans that relates to aggressive play. So things like wrestling or things like rough-and-tumble play, which is very common in animals, and kids and some adults
is that? Because there's going to be a physical interaction.
In animals, what will happen is they will March toward one another often very slowly but rather than having their hair
up. What should we call? Pilo erection, which is when the hair goes up animals, do this to make themselves look bigger. Think about the cat. That's trying to look bigger or an animal that's being aggressive. Trying to look bigger in the presence of of a faux different animal that they're either going to try and kill or fight in some way. Even if it's to defend
themselves, partial, postures occur. When animals will
approach one another,
There, but they'll keep their fur down.
Humans will do this too. They were approached during play. But unless it's highly competitive
play like a football game or a boxing match. They will actually shrink their body size, somewhat. We have hair on our bodies, some of us more than others, and that hair is capable of pile erection. It can stand up. That's the hair standing up on end
phenomenon, but most of us don't have enough hair on our
bodies that we can actually use that to make ourselves large.
So,
So what you see with people who are about to engage in play as they tend to make their body a little bit smaller, unless they are highly competitive and highly competitive play is its own distinct form of
play that, we'll talk about later, such as during sport when the stakes are high a
Super Bowl football game
revealing. My ignorance about sports here,
the Super Bowl
as it's typically called
is a very high stakes game, right?
Salaries depend on it, sponsorships depend on it. It's on
television reputations, the depend on it.
So, that's not really
playing a game. That's playing a very high stakes game and there you're not going to see these partial postures. You're not going to see soft eyes and tilting of the head at least not between the opposing players on the team. You're going to see quite the opposite grunting screaming, shouldering people, not blinking, lowering their eyes, or rather a shrinking, their eyes down to be to appear, more aggressive, these kinds of things staring right through the other person verbal threats, Etc. That's not really play. Even though he say they're playing a game of football.
It's very high-stakes play.
What I'm referring to here is when it's
fairly low stakes
and we see this again in animals and humans. So there are many many of
these partial postures. Again, they happen spontaneously.
So if someone ever looks at you and they tilt their head a little bit and they raise their eyebrows and they made me smile a little bit. They're looking at you playfully. That's the universal human
exchange of. I want to play. Do you want to play? There's another play expression that is considered the most extreme of
the come on. Let's play
expressions.
Postures. And this is one that seen in a lot of primates and indeed in some humans as well. And that's the eyes wide open and believe it or not tongue out. It's the that kind of silly thing and it's not I don't think that I've ever done that before. Just
that kind of thing is basically
what primate species of all kinds. And indeed we are Old World primates as well
do when they want to say I'm definitely here to
play and that's why I'm here. Okay, it's it has this kind of silly look.
Or connotation, but if you watch
chimpanzees or you look at bonobos or even in the so-called New World
monkeys, which tend to be the smaller monkeys old world, monkeys tend to be the ones that in general, see the world. As we do, they have what we call trichromacy. They're the ones that often can look very human-like. The new world monkeys tend to be the little ones
in general. I'll give you a little trick here. Little tool based on primatology, if you see a monkey and it's making very slow movements,
or you see an ape of any kind of making very slow movements, very likely to be an
The world primate if you see a monkey and it's making very
quick movements, like it's doing this kind of thing. Like it's like
a could be a
squirrel, monkey could be a marmoset
likely to be a new world monkey and they don't see the world that the same way. We do. They see the world more like a dog. They don't really see Reds. They see Reds as orange Etc. Okay, that's not a hard and fast Rule and I'm sure the primatologist are going to come after me with whatever primatologist come after you with monkey biscuits or something like that. But in general, it's a good rule. If you're at the zoo and you see a slow.
Moving monkey with slow, deliberate gestures, kind of moves. Its eyes makes eye contact every once in a. While those tend to be the Old World primates, those kind of jittery ones that look like they're really nervous wrapping their tail and kind of hiding their, in a little bundle. Those tend to be the new world monkeys. Okay, again, not a a black-and-white type division, but that'll get you most of the way. So, the whole purpose of these partial postures or the tongue out thing is to
limit power in
deliberate ways to really take bodily expression.
That could be
portrayed or
could be interpreted as aggressive, or as threatening, or as wanting to
mate, or is willing wanting to do anything for that matter. And to limit the
power with which they are expressed in very deliberate way. So, that's the putting the hair down despite getting into a fighting stance.
That's saying, let's fight, but I'm not really here to fight fight. It's low stakes,
fighting like if I pin you and then I'll let you go.
Or if you pin me, then you ought to let me go.
And so immediately, you can start to see how play starts to call into action social dynamics in which both
parties, have to make some sort of agreement about how high the stakes are now, the failures to do, this are also very informative in how we develop in social groups. And this
also can inform why some
people really play well with others. And other people don't. And some people seem to get along well with groups and can handle other people and some people are very rigid.
Fact. I have an anecdote about
I was a kid. We sir play this game. It's not a game. I suggest, but we used to do
what were called, dirt clod Wars. So A friend of mine has parents were generally not home in the
afternoon. So we must have been
somewhere around 10 or 11 years old. And we would set up these two big dirt Mounds. We would shovel them to big dirt. Mounds on two sides of the yard, and then we would just take dirt clods. And we throw them at one another and just have dirt clod Wars again. Not suggesting this. I'm not responsible for what happens if you do,
but there were rules and the rules were, for
instance.
You couldn't pack rocks into the dirt clods and you
could run across to the other side and you could jump on the other person surrounding Throw Dirt. Clods in there. I guess
this is stuff that we thought was
entertaining but if someone got hit in the head generally there was an unspoken rule that you kind of stop and see whether or not they were
damaged or not. Before you continue. You couldn't continue pelting them
and of course people broke this rule. In fact, I remember one kid. I'm
not going to name him because actually he's grown into a very very actually prominent and functional
adult.
But he got hit once in the head and then I think
someone had thrown a dirt clod shortly thereafter
and all of a sudden he just
went into a rage picking up rocks and sticks and attacking another
kid. And so clearly that was a case in which the rules of the
game were now being violated. But it serves a very important purpose. There Was, You know, the typical thing that there were some
tears, I think, as I recall
from one kid or the other, there was like, snot coming out of nose and turning bright red. A kid went home. It was a
mess. The parents that had to say
something, or maybe there's a phone call.
I don't quite recall how it got
resolved. But the idea is that there's an agreed upon set of
rules about how high the stakes are, and what we're all going to do. And
this is separate from sport where there are
clearly defined rules about, what's out of bounds? What's inbounds, what sorts of behaviors will get you a yellow card or a red card. For instance, on the soccer field
all animals, including humans are doing this low-stakes. Contingency testing and all animals including humans. You will find start to up the stakes and inevitably in group play one.
A of the group will kind of break rules. You see this also in puppies. So for
instance, puppies will bite one,
another, with those sharp little needle, like puppy teeth. I remember when Costello had those teeth. Those things were so darn. Sharp
and puppies will yelp. When one of their litter mates B them, that Yelp actually serves a very important inhibitory function. This is
well-defined to tell the other one. That's too tough. And this is how animals learn soft bite. Okay, if they don't get that feedback from other littermates, they never
actually learn. What's too?
Hard and
what's soft? And so humans do this as well. Now, you can look at your adult counterparts and deed. We should probably look at ourselves and ask, you know, did we learn proper play contingency? When we were younger, do we tend to take things too? Seriously, do we tend
to over react
aggressively when other people are clearly engaging in, you know, playful jabbing, or sarcasm or things of that sort.
Each of you will have a different experience of this. But the point is that play serves many
functions. It's not just about the self. It's also about
Interactions between multiple people. It's
about rule testing and low, stakes, contingency. Rule-breaking.
Also serves an important role as is with the example of the dirt clod War, puppies biting other puppies, etcetera. And last but not
least, there are different forms of play that helped us
establish, who we will become as adults.
One of the more powerful of these is role play when
children, and sometimes adults
will take on different roles that are distinct from their natural world.
Roles in order to, for instance, establish
hierarchies. So someone's going to be the leader and someone is going to be the follower, so will be dominant in some will be submissive. Someone
will work alone. Other people will work in a group. These kinds of role-playing are again ways in which the prefrontal cortex
has to expand the number of operations in Neuroscience. We call these algorithms that has to run in order to make predictions, you have to take in a lot of information about your environment all the time and make predictions. But if you are suddenly cast,
A new role. Well, then, you definitely have to make
even more predictions from a different standpoint. So these are very powerful for
teaching the brain, how to function. I had a sister growing up. I still have a sister, fortunately, and she, and her friends largely played with dolls and doll houses in the in the room next door. And they would take on
different roles. In fact, some kids, if they play alone, will start to take on the role of Leader by taking on an imaginary or creating an imaginary
friend and, you know, my apologies to my siblings.
But for a long time, she had an imaginary friend eventually that imaginary friend disappeared. I don't know the science around imaginary
friends, and what makes them disappear or not at what stage of
development. But imaginary friends are pretty common and that's just another way of being able to,
you know, boss, somebody around if that's your thing or to do, engage in cooperative play.
So, we can look at the stage of development. We call childhood, and we can look at each stage of it. And we can say, wow. They're all these different dimensions of play. That really are about.
Testing out how we feel comfortable, or uncomfortable, how we react, good or bad, how we react with stress, or with Glee
when others behave, in certain ways. And so, I'm
hoping is coming through, is that play is not
just about having fun. Play is about testing. It's about experimenting, and it's about expanding your brain's capacity and that's true early in development and it's true throughout the lifespan. So at this point in the discussion, I want to take a step back,
look at the biology.
Ecology and neurochemistry of
play just a little bit
and in doing that really Define, what is
effective play? If the goal of play is
to explore different contingencies
in low stakes environments, and to expand the function of our prefrontal cortex so that we can see new possibilities and new ways of being become more flexible, more creative, more effective outside of the games of play, or the Arena's of play. I should say. Well then
we should be asking
how do I know if I'm playing? How do I know?
I'm playing correctly,
turns out, there's an answer to that
earlier. I referred to this brain area. The periaqueductal gray that releases opioids, endogenous opioids into our brain and body
and tends to relax us a bit. It actually
is what leads to these things like soft eyes, and head, tilts and puppies. Making, you know, puppy postures and things of that sort
and how that opens up the number of different functions
or algorithms that the prefrontal cortex.
Tex can run.
But there's another piece of the puzzle which is for something to genuinely
be play and playful. And for it to have this effect of expanding our brain and engaging, neuroplasticity of really changing our brains so that we can see and engage in more possible, behaviors and thoughts Etc. We
also have to have low amounts of adrenaline,
so called epinephrine in our brain and body.
Now, the background science for this is quite extensive, but,
For those of you that are interested in
papers and manuscripts perhaps the best one is a review published in neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews by the very jaak panksepp. Although he has a co-author which is Stephen civvy. SIV is why I'll provide a link to this in the caption show notes.
And the title of this paper is in search of the neurobiological
substrates for social playfulness, in mammalian brains,
and it's a quite extensive review, but it basically boils down to
Some key findings, whereby any sorts of drugs or behaviors or scenarios
that increase levels of adrenaline, too much,
will tend to inhibit play and drugs and scenarios. And I'm not suggesting recreational drugs here.
But these were experiments that were done in the laboratory. Setting that
increase the endogenous
opioid output will tend to increase playfulness.
And so really the state of
mind that one needs to adopt.
When playing is, first of all, you have to engage in the play it, whatever it happens to be with some degree of focus and
seriousness and focus and seriousness. In the neurobiological context generally means epinephrine being able to focus is largely reliant on things like adrenaline epinephrine, but also the presence of dopamine which is a molecule that generates motivation and focus in concert with
epinephrine but also that these endogenous
opioids, be liberated and it's really the low
Low stakes feature of play that allows those endogenous opioids to be liberated. What do I mean by that? Well, if
you are very, very
concerned about the outcome, like, you've put a lot of money on the table in a given game, or you're a football player in the Super Bowl, or you're playing a game for which, you know, defeating the other person where your team winning is absolutely
crucial to you. Well, then that's not really going to
engage the play circuitry.
On the contrary, if you're engaging in those same behaviors or any other behavior in a way that you're simply there to
explore, but you don't
have high levels of adrenaline in your system. You're not stressed about the potential
outcome. Well, then that
constitutes play
now. That's somewhat obvious on the one hand
that you take, seriously, what you take, seriously, and you can be more playful about things that you don't take. So seriously,
but what is absolutely not
obvious is that the state of playfulness is actually what allows you to.
Perform best, because the state of playfulness offers you the opportunity to engage in novel types of behaviors and interactions that you would not otherwise be able to access if you are so focused on the outcome.
Okay. So a state of playfulness is absolutely
critical. Not just during play. But during competitive scenarios of any kind,
actually started to
cultivate a practice related to this. When I was in college, I had this kind
of general practice of when I wanted to learn
Earn
something. I would tell myself that it was the most important information in the world and that I was very, very interested in. I would kind of lie to myself and say, oh, I'm super interested in. I won't even the topics,
but super interested in this or super interest in that, and I could sort of delude myself into being
hyper focused, on whatever it is
that I was learning in ways. That surprised me. However, when we are hyper
focused on something, and we are rigidly attached to the outcome,
we can't engage.
Flexible thinking. So it's a great tool to be hyper focused on something. And take it very, very seriously, when we're simply trying to learn things by kind of rote, memory, learn things in regurgitate, learn and regurgitate of the sort that, you know, frankly, a lot of schooling involves.
But if we are trying to get better at
something, we sort of hit a wall and athletic performance or in cognitive performance where we're not creative enough or we're
finding, let's just use a sports example that, you know, we only have a certain number of moves
that we can deploy or certainly
Number of swings of the racket that we can deploy the way to actually expand your practice is to engage in this kind of low stakes thinking the idea
that, well. I'm just going to kind of play and Tinker. I'm going to explore in a way that it doesn't really
matter. If the ball goes back over the
net, the only matter of the ball goes in the hole and it's counterintuitive because you think know that thing that
we need to do is drill and drill and drill and drill and indeed there's a place for that.
But this mode of play
with modest levels of endogenous opioids, being released in our
Plus low levels of adrenaline, right?
Epinephrine, low levels of epinephrine. Adrenaline
are possible, only when the
stakes are low enough, that were not stressed.
Well, that combination really allows the prefrontal cortex to explore different
possibilities in ways that can truly expand our capabilities over time. Now, this has been seen again. And again, also, in the business sector, some of the more challenging or I should say, competitive companies to get jobs
at are very interested in hiring people that as
As children were so-called
tinkerers and actually, NASA was first famous for this that many of the people that achieved great success in engineering at Nasa when they looked back into their childhood
histories, those people tended, to be Tinkers. They were people that would kind of play with things in a way that wasn't about
rigidly following a recipe or an instruction
manual. Great Cooks, discover new forms of
food, indeed, created entire genres of food by way of being tinker's, okay.
You can't do this, I grew up playing various sports. But skateboarding was one that I was particularly involved in for a long time. One of the greatest skateboarders of all time, is some of you may recognize his name as the great Rodney. Mullen
and Rodney was kind of famous for evolving the sport and continue to evolve the sport in ways that no
one could predict using skateboards and all sorts of ways that no one had thought of previously. And, of course, there are other skateboarders that did that as well, but he's particularly well known for that.
And his process is his own. I
it speak to it too much, but he was also known as a kind of a tinkerer as somebody, who would spend a lot of time, just kind of flipping the board, and just flipping it in the air and watching the ways in which it flipped and kind of studying the physics
of it really. And
expanding on his existing understanding of
what could happen on a skateboard by way of just playing. Now, he
took it very seriously, but it's this kind of Razors Edge between taking something very seriously but also tinkering and playing and exploring and just seeing what
happens it? Kind of like, well, let's just see what
happens.
We did this, that mindset is extremely
powerful to export, from this thing that we call play into. What we could call more serious endeavours of one's occupation or sport, whether or not it's behind a desk, or whether or not it's running around on a field really for or
engineering any Endeavor. And so the whole purpose of this episode on play is yes.
On the one hand to illustrate the incredible evolutionary utility of play for setting up the self and relation of the self to others in the
need for setting up cultures entirely because cultures will watch sport together or they'll celebrate their team winning. I mean World Cup nerd, been a big soccer fan, even though my dad is Argentine, but it's incredible. I mean, the entire world kind of lights up and gets engaged around whether or not their team. Their country is going to win the Olympics. Also being another example,
but play and Sport are not quite the same as I've pointed out before
and for all of us who are
thinking about tools and things that we can extract from science to enrich our
lives. I
would say for those of you that are already
He playing on a regular basis in one
form or another terrific start to expand other forms of play in particular forms of Play that involve new groups of individuals. So if you're somebody, that typically plays one-on-one with, somebody tried to expand into
playing as teams. If you're somebody who only plays
alone then try to expand
into playing in perhaps one-on-one first. And in groups.
This is the way that your brain learns and
evolves and changes and gets better. And I raise this because
another one of the top, 10 questions I get is
How can I keep my brain young? How can I continue to learn? How can I get better in school and sport in life and relationships, Etc,
emotionally
cognitively, and on, and on, and on, and yes, there are supplements that can support
neuroplasticity. Yes. There are brain games and apps that can support neuroplasticity. But if you really want to engage neuroplasticity at any age,
what you need to do is return to the same sorts of practices and tools that your nervous system
naturally used throughout development.
And and that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to
trigger this thing that we called neuroplasticity. And the reason this is so important is because it starts to move us away from what some
people called hacks, I Define hacks as using one thing for a different purpose, to kind of get a shortcut. I don't really like
the term frankly and I don't like it because it's not grounded in any biological mechanism. But when we look at play, we can say play is the portal to plasticity play at every stage of life is the way in which we learned the
rules for that.
Stage of life
and play is the way in which we were able
to test how we might function in the real world context.
So play is powerful and we could even say that play. Is it the most powerful portal to plasticity. The reason for that is that, yes, this
High opioid low epinephrine, or adrenaline,
state is what opens up play. But then, inside of the Arena of play When the prefrontal cortex is running all these different possibilities.
In this low stakes way. But with some degree of focus, there are a number of other
chemicals that are deployed things like
brain, derived neurotrophic
factor and other growth factors that actually trigger the rewiring of brain circuits that allow for it to expand. And indeed that's what is neuroplasticity. If you're interested in
those chemicals and thing kind of
Arena of things that happen when one engages in neuroplasticity, there's a
vast literature out there, but one of the more
popular
Books that I think is quite good is from my friend and colleague, John ratey. Who's a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. That's our 8ee. Why he wrote the book, spark a few
years back and I think it's still very relevant and John talks about the important role that play
exerts in the neural plasticity process and points to a number of different protocols that one can engage in. He also points to the importance of
navigating new environments to not just go on the same hike every week or take
the same walk, but actually get into new novel environments, so
Starting to sense a theme here. There's novelty exploring, contingencies, keeping the stakes, relatively low, etc. Etc. But these really are the gates to this Holy
Grail that we called neuroplasticity
neuroplasticity. As I've talked about in the
podcast before is a two-step
process. It involves focusing very intensely or at least focusing
somewhat on whatever it is. That one
is trying to learn and then engaging in
depressed, ideally deep sleep in the following nights, and I've also talked about the benefits of things like naps in yoga.
Nedra so-called NSD are non sleep depressed for enhancing or accelerating plasticity. You can check out the episodes on Focus huberman lab.com or the episodes on how to learn faster the detail. All those, we had a
newsletter that lists out all the
tools for neuroplasticity, enhancing, neuroplasticity. All that is available, zero cost to you at huberman. Lab.com, Etc. You can just download that information, but John's
book that newsletter those episodes, they really
To this two-step process where
its focus and then rest focus, and then rest and play as its own unique
form of focused and then rest Focus Andres, it's not the same as learning, something for sake of school or critically, trying to learn a motor behavior for sake of sport.
It's really about expanding the number of things that
you could learn down the line. Okay, so said, once again,
so I just want to make sure it's abundantly clear. Play is about establishing a broader
framework.
Within which you can learn new things.
It's not about learning some specific thing. It's not about the game, you happen to be playing. It's
not about the dollhouse that the kids are playing with so that they could become amazing dollhouse players when they grow up, right? The dirt, clod war that I referred to earlier For Better or For Worse
was not about becoming the
best dirt, clod thrower or in winning the trophy for dirt clods in the neighborhood. Although we actually had a trophy for the best dirt club team alas. It was not my team that year,
but the the point is that you're learning.
Rules and establishing a broader
Foundation of practices that then you
can learn more things
within that context.
Thus far. I've tried to convince you through a
combination of data and anecdote and explanation
that adopting a stance of playfulness and
indeed engaging in play on a somewhat regular basis, could be beneficial to you regardless of circumstances or goals.
If I haven't done that already, what I'm about to tell you, hopefully will push you over the line. It turns out that when you look across the kingdom of all animals, what you find is that animals that engage in playful behaviors for the longest period of
time, are also the animals that have the greatest degree of neuroplasticity, the brain and nervous systems ability to change in response to
experience.
Put differently animals that only play for a very small fraction of their entire
life. Have very rigid, brains that don't learn new things. Whereas animals, that play for a long period throughout their life, have very plastic brains, and there's even some evidence that's
this point largely anecdotal, but there's some data starting to emerge that adults, that maintain a playful stance that engage in things. Again that are
Low stakes, contingency exploring important enough that people focus
and that people pay attention to what they're doing, but that they are not filled with adrenaline, you know, freaked out about the outcome Being A or B. They're not super, super competitive. Maybe just a little bit competitive or not competitive at all, that allows for more ongoing plasticity. And one of the people that comes to mind and thinking about this is, of course, the physicist, and I should say, the Great
Richard feinman Nobel Prize. Winner professor at Caltech was involved in the
Manhattan Project but was also known for being
a lifelong tinkerer, right? He also was a mischievous Tinker if you read any of the books about 5 Min or by fine, man, surely, you're joking. Mr. Fineman or what. Do you care? What other people think? These are wonderful short stories.
Mostly about Fineman doing
things like picking all the locks at the limo Los Alamos
laboratory and putting
all the top secret documents out on the floor of the office. So,
That when people came in, in the morning, they were all out there. Obviously, they weren't released to the general public. He didn't want to threaten National Security,
playing pranks like that.
Well, and actually Caltech. I don't know if this is still the case, but Caltech, where he was employed, was always known for I'm doing very technologically, challenging pranks. They're not known for their athletic prowess at Caltech. Sorry, Kel Tec, but they were known, for example,
disrupting the scoreboard at the Rose
Bowl in. Pasadena for instance, and things of that sort.
Through technological Feats at least at the time required, a lot of playfulness and technological prowess.
So if you look in science or you look in art
or you look in medicine, or you look in any domain, what
you find is the people that continue to evolve new practices, tend to be people that were Tinkers. People that are very creative, tend to be people that are unafraid of exploring things in a this low-stakes way. They're not. So rigidly attached
to the outcome that they have to do everything
perfectly all the
Time. Now they might cloak these
playful Behavior so that their final Works always look, perfect or always look incredible, but they have this kind of playful nature about them. I would venture even to say that the street artist Banksy, for instance, obviously an incredible artist puts a ton of thought and preparation into their work,
but there's a kind of playfulness to the whole thing
to the of using two-dimensional paintings in concert with three-dimensional, City dwellings in ways that I think that most people hadn't previously, there were other people like Chris.
And then, you know, artists of that sort that did that, but I think Banksy is kind of recognizes the modern, the modern rendition of that kind of playfulness using cities in ways that most people don't use cities using art and ways that most people don't use art for instance. So to go back to the example of Fineman,
Fineman was somebody who learn to paint and draw quite well, into his 60s. He was
somewhat famous or inFAMOUS. I should say
for Bongo drumming on the roof of Caltech. I say Infamous,
because
He was known also for doing that naked. Something that certainly not in concert with the ethical standards and
behaviors of universities today. But firemen had this playful spirit
as a child. He had that playful spirit as a teenager and he had that playful spirit as an adult and that's one of the Hallmarks of Fineman was that he wasn't just a rigid physicist who could explain things clearly, the general public. He always carried through this playful spirit and in some of his writings
he pointed to the
I said that playful spirit was something that he worked very hard to continue to cultivate in himself because it was the way in which he could see the world differently and to indeed make great discoveries in the field
of physics, but also to kind of evolve his
relationship to life more generally.
And so he comes to mind is as a prominent example of somebody who did this. And if I could achieve anything with this episode, besides teaching you something about the biology of
play would be to teach you about the utility
of play again. I'm don't consider myself.
Self a particularly
playful person by nature. But
I've tried over the years to adopt this stance of exploring things that are
you know, very focused on contingencies of different kinds but keep the stakes low enough that I can have some fun doing them. And I like to think that it's benefited me somewhat. I'd like to drill a little bit further into this thing that we call neuroplasticity. Again, neuroplasticity is the brain and nervous systems ability to change in response to experience, and I should just say that throughout the entire life span the nervous.
We can change very quickly in
response to negative experiences. We can almost all engage in what's called one trial learning. Where, if
something really terrible or
traumatic happens to us. Our nervous system will rewire almost immediately at least within a few days such that we tend to want to avoid the experience that led to that trauma. Now, the whole business of why people
return to things that are traumatic to them, is
a whole other issue. There are books about things like trauma bonding. There's the so-called repetition compulsion.
And from psychoanalysis that people go back into trauma to retest and gain new opportunities to overcome the trauma,
etc. Etc. But in general, what I'm referring to here is, you know, you have a bad experience to the swimming pool. When you're a kid where someone hold your head under
water too long, and then you just don't want to get back in the water. That's one trial learning of sorts. That of course, can be overcome through proper exposure therapy, or someone that you trust, taking, you there, or any number of behaviors that allow you to overcome that beat, that particular scenario and experience something new.
That same context,
but across the lifespan, the learning of new things, new, contingencies new possibilities.
Occurs very differently from about age
0. When were born until about age, 25 and thereafter. So from about about, I want to emphasize approximately age, 25
onward, neuroplasticity, occurs through
the process. That is exactly as I described
before, Focus, rest, Focus, rest, we focus very intensely. We can't do the thing. We can't do the New Movement. We can't do the golf swing. We can learn the math.
We try, we try retry retry. We sleep a few nights and then all of a sudden we can do it right? Because
Rewiring actually occurs during depressed or naps, but mostly during deep, sleep
from birth till about age 25. However, we can learn things, new things, and new contingencies,
not just negative things and traumatic
things, through somewhat, passive, exposure to those things, right? I will never
forget. The first time that we went on a family trip to Washington d.c. And went to the Smithsonian. I got to see the old fighter planes and I think I think Kitty Hawk
or
The first one of the first planes is there. Anyway,
I obviously my recollection isn't terrific. My hippocampus is flailing on that one, but I'll
never forget the trip and I'll never forget who went
and I think was probably eight or nine years old.
It's embedded Somewhere In My Memory. And so, just through passive experience and my focusing on the things that excited me about that trip. I
have a recollection of that experience. I didn't have to
deliberately Focus. I didn't wasn't telling myself
focused. You're going to need to remember this trip someday under going to be podcasting about this, you know in 30
Years or whenever. Again, I forget exactly how old I was, but
the key feature here is that the developing brain is able to learn through passive experience because the
neurons, the nerve cells in the developing brain art
much more over
connected than they will. Be later in life.
The way to think about this is sort of, if you use Google Maps as I do too often, I think when I drive there are a number of roads and pathways.
It will get you from point A to point
B, we
could imagine those as neural circuits or we can imagine neural circuits as those roads early in development. The nerve connections are much more extensive. It's like having a Google Maps that where everything is connected to everything. Through tiny little cross streets in the whole thing, is just a complete mess,
but then by taking particular routes of behavior, of thought of emotion
certain routes become well established and the
Routes that are not
taken simply disappear. Now, in the biological context in the brain, we
call that process pruning and the simple way to Envision. This is early development. You have many, many more neurons than you will have as an adult. Those neurons are extensively
interconnected and approximately 40% of those interconnections will disappear by time. You're 25 years old. They are gone. They are actively removed through processes. That involve things like
glial cells that come in.
And literally sneak their little processes in between neurons at the
synapse which are the points of contact and communication between
neurons and push those apart, even eat neurons, right? There's some incredible work from for
instance. Best Stevens Lab at
Harvard Medical School showing that glial cells going in. Eat synapses that are
not functional for that particular circuit. Now
what this tells us is that much of our learning during
development is the removal of incorrect.
But it also involves the
strengthening of connections that are going to serve certain emotion certain functions motor functions cognitive functions, Etc.
The process of play is largely a
process of engaging, pruning of neural connections, and strengthening of the remaining connections.
I'm sure that many of you have heard the term fire together wire together. That phrase is
often incorrectly attributed to the great Donald Hebb who indeed was great. Did incredible work a psychologist from Canada who established a lot of the basic
seller learning rules for learning and memory, but it was the also great. Dr. Carla.
That's who is now at Stanford and was at Berkeley and Harvard as well. But who is at Stanford Medical School? Who
coined this term fire together wire together? Indeed. That's what happens
when children play when adolescents play and when young adults play whether or not it's social play or
play with an object, whether or not. It's a sport
or play of any kind imaginary Play Imaginary Friend play. There is a strengthening of certain neural connections and a pruning.
A way of up to forty percent perhaps even more of connections that are not
necessary for certain types of behaviors emotions and thoughts.
What this means is that it is through the process of play that we become who we are as adults. And as I mentioned earlier, it is through the process of play that are we that we are able to
adjust who we are as adults.
Now, there are bounds on this process. As far as I know. There's never been a reported case.
An individual who had a hyperplastic, or I should say a
brain that was, as
plastic in adulthood as it was in childhood. But
what this tells us is that what we do in the process of play. As children is really how we set up the rules
for how we behave as adult in, almost all domains, which is really incredible. And, of course, the reassuring thing is that playing as an adult will allow you to expand on those neural circuits. You can literally grow new connections. Some of you
Maybe saying does it
create new neurons as for better for worse? It does not seem that many new
neurons are added to your brain. In adulthood.
There are some papers that report a few neurons in certain brain areas, isolated, brain areas. But by and large, most of the
rewiring of neural connections, is the removal of certain connections. This process were
calling pruning and the strengthening of
the remaining connections that make those kind of Google Maps roads in the analogy. I laid out before thicker and more robust think about is
taking little trails and
Turning them into
roads and Paving those roads, then turning those roads into highways than putting up more Lanes on those highways and eliminating all the small, little Backcountry roads, that one could take. And again, this is an analogy for what is happening at the level of neural circuitry. Now,
one of the key findings that has emerged from the literature is that children that have been subjected to trauma or immense amounts of stress of any kind.
Have a harder time both engaging in play but
also harder time. Accessing neuroplasticity later in life.
The good news is this is not a permanent effect, will talk
about some of the ways to overcome that in a moment,
but this should make sense to you. Because earlier, we talked about how a high level of adrenaline epinephrine in the brain and body, actually, inhibits blocks the
circuits in the brain and body that generate play behavior. And when I say that, I mean that in a
very
A concrete way that epinephrine and adrenaline can actually suppress the sorts of
circuitry that can lead to things like soft dies or tongue
out, or the head tilt, or what we called, partial postures of being able to engage in, you know, a rough-and-tumble play. But not take that to the point
of outright aggression and damaging the other person or them damaging you.
So when I say that, you know, trauma and the stress can inhibit neuroplasticity by way of inhibiting.
Play at a deeper neurobiological level. What I'm really saying is that the high levels of adrenaline that are generated from
trauma and stress actually shut down, the circuits that
allow a child
or a young adult to enter the game of play or engage in the game of play in the same way that a child or young adult who didn't have high levels of adrenaline in their system could possibly engage in.
Now, the good news is that many of the existing
trauma therapies that are out there now, including things like,
Our exposure therapy, cognitive
behavioral therapy and on and on, including some of the
therapies that are more nor chemical things like ketamine or
are more engineering based things like transcranial magnetic stimulation. For instance, many
of those are paired with forms of talk therapy that are really about the same thing. That play is about which is exploring different contingencies. It's about exploring different types of emotional experiences as they relate to the
Same sort of scenario that created the trauma. And we did an entire episode on fear and Trauma. And I recommend you check out that episode. It's easy to find again at huberman, lab comments on YouTube, Apple Spotify, etcetera, etcetera. Very easy to find. And there, I talked all about trauma treatments and the various kinds of trauma treatments that are out there, their efficacy in different scenarios and traumas and so on.
But the point I'd like to make now is that the reason
why children who experience a lot of trauma and stress have limited plasticity later on
is
As of the neurochemical substrates that are created from
trauma and stress, because after all stress is epinephrine, and epinephrine is stressed. Those are
inseparable and the way in, which it more or less shuts down or at
least inhibits suppresses those play
circuits. And again, the reassuring thing
is that by engaging, in play as adults. We can reactivate some of those circuits and reopen the plasticity.
In fact, one very prominent trauma treatment. Now,
especially for people that have
been subjected to very severe traumas in the ongoing sense. Meaning
traumas that went on for many, many years is to get them to engage
in play in things like dance
in. Basically getting them to engage their bodily movements in ways that they would otherwise
not feel comfortable to engage in
and I find this area. So interesting because on the face of it, you could say, oh,
that's kind of, you know, is that really biomedical treatment? You know, you're taking people were traumatized and having them
Dance. I mean, it seems kind of silly on the one
hand depending on your
Your particular
orientation but on the other hand, it's actually quite profound and quite grounded in the mechanisms by which the brain circuits change. So again back to this original principle, which is that play isn't just one Portal 2.
Plasticity play is the fundamental portal to plasticity and
that play and dance and
exploration of Novel
movements, exploration of Novel athletic movements are the route by
Which we access new ways of thinking new contingencies and I find it wonderful that the trauma of
release and the psychiatric and psychology
Community are exploring things like play and dance and other forms of reopening these circuits because indeed we would all loved for there to be a magic Pill by which trauma could be erased and new memories could be laid down or a device that could do that. But frankly, if you ask me or a number of my colleagues,
Whether or not that's likely to happen. Anytime soon in an effective way. I think the short answer is going to be know that there are
going to be chemicals and things that can augment and support that
process. But that there's not going to be just a magic pill that will suddenly reverse trauma. All together that
it's always going to be a case whereby shifts in neurochemical states are
going to have to be combined with new ways of thinking and new behaviors.
And I find it wonderful and reassuring that people are looking at Play and play Behavior as a not just one.
One tiny Shard
of possibility there, but that it might actually be the main driver and a highly productive lever by which to rewire the traumatized brain.
So if you're like me, you might be thinking. Okay. I'm willing to be more playful. I'm willing to
explore play as a portal to
plasticity and that all makes good sense. But what should I play? What should I do? Well, we've already established that you want to keep your adrenaline low. You have to keep the stakes low enough.
That you're not going to get totally consumed by the outcome. Now for some people who are highly competitive that's going to be challenging and yet I don't want to make it seem as if you can't be
competitive during play. There are many
forms of competitive play that
because you are a competitive person. Allow you to drive great. Joy from that competitive play. I have a
friend who's particularly good at horseshoes. I'm not particularly good at horseshoes. But whenever we play horseshoes, I can
tell. He's out there to crush me on.
Horseshoes.
And it's just one of these things where, you know, I can
tell he derives great pleasure, from crushing me at a game of horseshoes.
I can't say because I haven't
actually done the micro dialysis which is a way of extracting chemistry from the brain in real time
nor have I recorded from his brain or image it in a scanner whether or not he has high levels of
epinephrine or low levels of epinephrine during those games of horseshoes. I suspect as low levels of epinephrine and high levels of dopamine, especially when he wins and yes, he wins every time
but the
Is that you can be competitive
during play provided that you were enjoying
yourself? Okay, you can be
competitive provided that you are enjoying
yourself. There are particular forms of play that lend themselves best to
neuroplasticity and
those particular forms of play again are not designed to necessarily just
Engage The plasticity that allows you to perform that behavior.
But rather to expand the number of possibilities
for your brain to change in general, throughout life.
And the two major forms of those for which there's good peer-reviewed, research is to engage in novel, forms of movement, including different speeds of movement. So let's say, for instance, you're somebody who
runs, I happen to like running. I try and run three times a week.
Generally. When I run I run forward, I don't run backward although recently because I've become very
excited about the work of so-called knees over toes guy. His name is Ben Parker, but he goes by knees over toes guy on Instagram. I've never met him.
We've exchanged a few messages back
and forth and some of his practices
involve walking backwards or doing sled poles backwards. I found these to be very beneficial for my back and for my, you know, anterior
tibialis and some things that have really helped with
my posture and so forth, but
in general when I run I run forward, I don't tend to run
backward that much and I might do that for a few minutes at the end but not so much throughout the entire run.
Running doesn't lend itself to a
lot of Novel forms of movement laterally.
Move in. So for the you nerds out there moving in the sagittal plane
or angled movements, but it does appear that things like dance or Sports where you end up generating, a lot of dynamic movements, where there's jumping where there's movement at different angles, where there's ducting where there's leaping
that basically involve a lot of dynamic movement and aren't just strictly
linear. Those seem to open the portals for
plasticity. And that's because they mimic a lot of the brain circuitry that
Associated with play.
And the reason for that is the way in which those Dynamic movements, and movements of different speeds engage the vestibular system, the balance system. The vestibular system is in the inner ear, relates to the cerebellum, which translate the mini brain. Yellow mini brain in the back of your brain.
It brings
together visual information in a very direct way. I talked a lot about this, in the episode on
how to learn faster. So if you want to go in depth on how vestibular and different types of motor movements can open plasticity, at talk, a little bit more, I should say a lot more.
Or
there. But suffice to say that engaging in play that has a lot of dynamic movement or movements of different speeds. Things, like dance, things like sports, like
soccer where you're moving in different dimensions, that tends to be very conducive to what we would call play related circuitry provided. You don't take it too. Seriously. You don't get those high levels of epinephrine.
Now, for those of you that are also interested in non-physical or non-athletic forms
of play that can really expand plasticity.
There's some
Interesting research about the game of chess.
I don't play the game of chess. I've played a few times. I confess. I don't know how to move all the pieces, so I'm not going to try and describe that
here, but I've always wanted to learn chess and I think after reading some of the peer-reviewed research
about Chess and play in neuroplasticity. Now, I understand why
there's a really nice paper that was published in the international Journal of research and education
and Science in 2017. And the title of this paper is
is chest just a game. Or is it a mirror that
reflects a child's inner?
Our world. That's a very, very intense title for a biologist like me.
But this paper is so interesting because what it really points to is the fact that in a single game
chess you have at least
as I understand two players and those two players are moving pieces on the chessboard for which each piece can
do different things. Right. Can move in different ways under different scenarios, but
they're different rules for different pieces. And so each player actually
has to assume
Multiple identities during the same game
and each of those identities has different rules and ways of interacting. So, in a way, we can think of Chess has one game, but actually chess is a kind of a substrate for exploring multiple
roles for different characters.
And this is quite a bit different than for
instance, video games where somebody has their favorite video game player or they have an avatar and they're always in the same role. It's
also quite a bit different for when you engage in any kind of play where you are yourself.
If you're
just being you in that game,
and so now I am highly incentivized to explore
chess. You see quotes out there for instance, things like chess is life or Jiu-Jitsu is life. I always assumed that that meant that someone's entire life was chess or their entire
life was
Jiu-Jitsu for instance,
but in Reading over the research, about Chess in particular, but also
certain forms of martial arts. Also, certain forms of Dance.
What one finds is that?
I need those games are life in the sense, that they involve, adopting multiple roles and exploring contingencies in a number of different ways. So, there are some games that allow you to explore a much vaster
landscape of movements or of mental roles, or of ways of engaging in strategic movement as is the case with chess. And so, when you hear
that, you know, activity blank is life, it often reflects the passion for that activity, but I think looked at differently, it also reflects.
It's the fact that that activity is a portal through which you can explore life through many, many different different lenses. And I think that that's especially powerful, in terms of thinking about how play can be leveraged for plasticity. So, for those of you that are interested in leveraging, play for
neuroplasticity and expanding your mind, if you will,
I highly recommend picking an activity. That will allow you to adopt different
roles within that activity where it's not rigidly
linear. This is actually
Way in which I start to depart from this modern and important but somewhat narrow idea
that exercise is the only route to
plasticity. Yes. It's true. I have Nobel
prize-winning colleagues that swim for two miles a day and have done that for a long time. And they will tell you
I always think more clearly
after my swimming. And I
certainly in my experience
after a good run or a good workout. My mind seems to work best unless of course, that workout was very, very intense. I've talked about this.
Before, if you do
work out, very, very hard
in whether or not to robic were
resistance training or sport of any kind. Your brain
won't function as well afterwards. Mostly because of the diversion of oxygen to tissues away from your brain actually getting less oxygen to your brain, but in general, most of us feel that if we exercise regularly our brain functions better,
but there are activities that extend beyond linear exercise Beyond just generating the same sets of
movements over and over again, whether or not exercise or not
and that's really what
Play is play is about dynamically, exploring different, kinds of movements. Dynamically, exploring different, kinds of thoughts. Dynamically exploring different. Kinds of
roles. That one could adopt and that is the way that the brain learns new things.
So I encourage you to explore chess. I intend to
learn chess this year. I'm very excited to do that. Now. If you already play chess and you are an expert chess player,
you actually will derive less
benefit in terms of this play induced neuroplasticity.
Society
than you would, for instance, if you went out and I don't
know, play the game of soccer or did something that was very novel for your nervous
system because in that novelty and in that
exploration of new behaviors and new ways of thinking, you are opening the portal to plasticity, whereas in doing what you already know how to do and trying just to perform better and better
at it. You will get better at chess. But again, that's just chess. You are not expanding
the Realms in which you can become more plastic that
You are able to learn new things in relationship in life, in finance and friendship etcetera.
In researching this episode. One of the most interesting areas. I
discovered was this notion of personal play identity.
Personal play identity is a term that at least to my knowledge was
coined by a Turkish researcher by the name and forgive me. I'm going to mispronounce. This is
Gohan. Gunas G. Okay. Haan last name,
gu NES.
Yes, and forgive me, go con. And if we have any turkish-speaking members of the audience, please put the correction in the comment
section on YouTube.
Make it Fun attic. So I can understand what it is, please. I'd love to correct it and I apologies or who knows? If I got it right, then. It was pure luck.
Go kongu. Ness has coined this term, personal play identity, and the key role that personal play identity establishes. In who we see.
Ourselves as being and not just in the context of
play personal play, identity has four
well-defined dimensions. And I should say that
if you're interested in learning more
about this, the the paper that I found particularly informative is published in current psychology, and the title is personal play identity and the fundamental elements in its developmental process. And the author, of course, is go. Cancun, SGU, NES last name, this is from 2021. So recent
review.
There are four components to personal play, identity, how you play your personality, so Co culture and environment. So that's the third one that's together. Socio-cultural environment and economics and Technology. Now, that sounds somewhat complex in this paper is somewhat complex, but basically what it says is that we bring together certain aspects of
ourselves and how we react to different place in aereo's, when were younger and we,
That forward into the world in all contexts as adults to illustrate this. I'm going to ask you a question when you were a child. Let's say, 10 years old.
You've considered yourself competitive. Would you have consider yourself? Somebody
who's cooperative and realize, of course, that those are not mutually exclusive. You could be competitive and
Cooperative. Would you consider yourself somebody that preferred to play alone or preferred to play with one or two, close friends, or were you somebody that really enjoyed playing in large groups?
Here's a key one. Were you somebody that enjoyed playing the leader in one moment and was equally okay,
with being a follower at a later moment. Were
you okay with having your role
switched? Midway through a game? Where'd you
get upset or be delighted or not care at all about
having to switch teams during the middle of game? Because your team was winning right to even things out, you can imagine how that would play out internally,
you would immediately register that
Must be a valuable player because you're
being moved off, the winning team
toward the losing team. But then again, you're now being forced to join
the losing team. How did you feel about that?
Were you somebody that was comfortable with other people breaking rules or
perhaps even yourself, breaking rules, or bending rules.
Kind of be able to find term or were you somebody that really need to know all the rules and if everyone didn't rigidly adhere to those
rules was quite disturbed by that.
The number of questions goes on and on and on and I will provide a link to a paper that asks. A number of questions that helps you arrive at a sort of score of sorts or an index of what goon s and
others have referred to as personal play identity.
The point is that if we look back to our early,
adolescence somewhere between 10 and 14 years old, a
peak time for Social Development, a peak time for play, a various kinds a
peak time for motor
development.
Time of psychosocial
development, where we learn where we fit into hierarchies as we relate to members of the same sex of the opposite sex, Etc.
We can start to get a portal into how and why we show
up to various activities in work and relationship, Etc. As
adult. In fact, I'll venture to say that if we go into that process for ourselves for 5 or 10 minutes, you start to see some remarkable
parallels between the way you were at that stage. And
And your Tendencies and your preferences as adults, we
tend to look at our early childhood experiences and our families, and to some degree, our friends in terms
of how we become who we become, I've talked about the incredible work of Allan schore on previous episodes of the podcast. Ellen, Shore is a psychiatrist and has done extensive work on how parent-child interactions and particular, baby, and mother but also Baby and father shape the brain.
And the brain and emotional systems ability to go from states of elation and excitement, the so called dopamine epinephrine type circuitry to the more
warm soothing types of calm interactions that in Broad terms could be described as more serotonin, oxytocin, and things of that sort.
That work really points to the key roles that the caregiver and the child you engaged in an early life. And that is incredible work. I do.
Hope to host
dr. Shore on the podcast at some point in the not-too-distant future,
but equally important, of course, are the interactions that we
export from that
early laying down of
biological circuitry, and psychological circuitry, to the way we play by ourselves. And the way we play with
others, in small numbers or in great numbers. And of course, it would be the case that how we played as a 10 or 12 year old
would impact how we behave as a 16 year old.
And as a 20-year old and as a 30 year
old and so on and so on one of my favorite things
about developmental biology and developmental psychology
is that it is grounded in the fact that we don't just have a childhood and adulthood
there isn't just our child self and our adult self.
And even though there are transitions around the mechanisms that underlie neuroplasticity
at approximately age 25.
It is simply the case that development is our entire lifespan that our lifespan is one
Long developmental Arc how long depends on our genetics are lifestyle
accidents, injury and disease, of course,
but it is one long developmental Arc. And so it shouldn't surprise us at all that how we learn to play as
a 10 year, old or 12 year old,
would impact, how we play and interact with people, as a teenager and a young adult, and on, and on, and on
And that players place in which we explore and which we learn play is the substrate by which our nervous system changes us from this hyper-connected,
batch of neurons where everything is connected to everything more or
less to a brain and nervous system, whereby certain circuits work with immense proficiency and others are less accessible to us. But again the wonderful thing about the human nervous system. Is that because
Is plastic for the entire lifespan. And because these two elements of focus and rest can be deployed again and again and again just because neural circuits didn't form does not mean that they can't form later in life. And today, we've been focusing on how play itself. The same substrate that we use during development to become who we are, is the portal by which we can change who we are for the better. So I hope I've convinced you. That play is an extremely important fundamental homey.
A statically regulated aspect of our nervous system, which is just a
mouthful of nerd. Speak to say
play can change your brain for the better and
that is true for every stage of Life. The recommendation that I make and certainly the one that I'm going to direct it myself as well
is to try and engage in
at least one hour of pure play per week.
I came to that recommendation because of the literature that says, well you need to engage in something pretty repetitive.
Lee, it should be novel.
So this wouldn't be something that you are
exceptionally good at already. If you
insist on doing something that you're already exceptionally good at, then you want to really do some free form low-stakes tinkering. So make it safe, but make it free form. So really explore things with that. Some people call this
beginner's mind. Although, I find that a little abstract. I
like the notion of beginner's mind, but it's like, how do you know if you're in beginner's mind, I think beginner's mind is sort of the expectation that you're not
going to do it. Well,
Yet but
play extends Beyond beginner's mind play is really about not even worrying. If you're
going to get good at it or really proficient at it. It's really about exploring contingencies with truly low-stakes. That's what will allow you to access these neuro chemical combinations of elevated, endogenous opioids, low epinephrine, Etc. That will open up neuroplasticity. For those of
you that need a little more guidance, on how to play. There's a book out there, actually learn about this, from Tim Ferriss has blog, it's called play it.
Way a Workaholics cure for anxiety. So that's more focused on anxiety. The the author is Charlie. Hone a last name Oho, eh n will provide a link for it in the show notes and caption play it away a Workaholics, cure for anxiety, but books and other resources, aside. I think one hour of play per week is a reasonable amount of time to engage in dedicated, play behavior. For the purpose of opening up, these neural circuits for
plasticity,
the key feature, of course.
Is to not have immense
provision, see in that given activity or at least not the way you
perform it. And if you do gain Proficiency in that activity, well, then it becomes something else. It's no longer route play, it's about
performance. So, in that case, you would then want to adopt a new play Behavior.
You'll notice that I largely avoided using the
word fun throughout. This episode, fun is a somewhat abstract
term and like many emotions and many verbal descriptions of experience. It falls short.
In the context of a neurobiological discussion about play. If
you have fun terrific, some people might find however, that engaging in play is kind of uncomfortable. Well, they're your goal. Then should be to lower your level of discomfort by focusing Less on the
outcomes and just simply engaging in the behavior because well, I'm telling you that it's good for you,
but hopefully you will tell yourself that
it's good for you and that you will
experience that. It's good for you. The literature certainly points to that and the literature.
He points to the fact that play is the way that we are built. We are built to play. We have brain circuits from back to front and within our body that are there for
play and they don't disappear. They do not get pruned away as we go from development to adulthood.
So if ever you needed a neurobiological explanation for why play
is important throughout the Life Span. It's that it's
that biology does not waste resources. It's extremely efficient, and we're the circuits for play not to
Important in adulthood, they would have been pruned away. But I guarantee you, they are there in your brain and nervous system. Now,
they will be there tomorrow and they will be, they're going forward. So, my suggestion is that you use them one hour per week.
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Am I do short posts that are related to topics
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Focus for sleep, for Learning and many other topics, as well in previous episodes of the human Lab podcast. We often refer to supplements. Now, supplements aren't necessary or correct for everybody. But many people derive tremendous benefit from them for things like sleep and focus. And so on, we've partnered with Thorne, that's thoi knee because Thorn supplements.
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URL portal, you can also get 20% off any of the other supplements that thorn makes. Thank you. Once again, for joining me for this discussion about the incredible biology and psychology and power of this thing that we
call play. And last, but certainly not least. Thank you for your interest in science.
