You might not think of Play in terms of affective neuroscience, but according to Jaak Panksepp’s years of lab research, playfulness is the source of one of the most positive social-affective feelings our brains can generate.
The neuroscience of play involves the release of endogenous opioid, dopamine, and endogenous cannabinoid. The release of endogenous opioid stimulates Play and governs sexual and maternal behaviors. These endogenous opioids also reduce separation distress and pain. Play is a powerful and rewarding if not euphoric activity in the brain.
Higher levels of brain opioids generate feelings of self-confidence that facilitate winning in competitions. Lower levels of brain opioids, on the other hand, generate feelings of greater social need and hence insecurity.
Play
You likely have seen squirrels chasing each other back and forth and up and down trees and sometimes culminating in mating behavior. Rats love to play. They laugh when they are tickled and come back for more. Jaak Panksepp tickled them as he recorded their ultrasound chirps of laughter.
Two squirrel images by Hitomi Dames
Neuroscientists and psychotherapists have tended to ignore play as a systematic part of psychotherapeutic contexts. But Play is a fundamental brain system common to all mammals and perhaps other animals as well. Research suggests that the Play system may be especially important in the epigenetic development and maturation of the neocortex.
Functions of Play
Panksepp divides the functions of Play into two broad categories: social and nonsocial. Social includes learning competitive and non-competitive social skills including bonding, cooperation, and the ability to communicate effectively. Nonsocial includes physical fitness and agility, cognitive skills, using tools, and the ability to think creatively and be innovative.
Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn (Basic Books) and Psychology (Worth Publishers, a college textbook now in its 8th edition, says that when children are in charge of their own play, it provides a future for their own mental health as older children and adults. He mentions five ways that play benefits children.
- Play gives children a chance to find and develop a connection to their own self-identified and self-guided interests.
2. It is through play that children first learn how to make decisions, solve problems, exert self-control, and follow rules.
3. Children learn to handle their emotions, including anger and fear, during play.
4. Play helps children make friends and learn to get along with each other as equals.
5. Most importantly, play is a source of happiness.
Mental Illness
Over the past 50 to 70 years children’s free play time has decreased markedly. During this same time, children and adolescents have been hit with five to eight times increase in anxiety disorders. And of course, this results in the high rate – 31% to33%– of lifetime anxiety of adults.
According to the National Institute of Health report in 2017, there were an estimated 46.6 million adults aged 18 or older in the United States with any mental illness (AMI).
This number represented 18.9% of all U.S. adults. The prevalence of AMI was higher among women (22.3%) than men (15.1%).
Young adults aged 18-25 years had the highest prevalence of AMI (25.8%) compared to adults aged 26-49 years (22.2%) and aged 50 and older (13.8%).
The prevalence of AMI was highest among the adults reporting two or more races (28.6%), followed by White adults (20.4%). The prevalence of AMI was lowest among Asian adults (14.5%).
Gray says the increased psychopathology seems to have nothing to do with realistic dangers and uncertainties in the larger world. The changes do not correlate with economic cycles, wars, or any of the other kinds of world events that people often talk about as affecting children’s mental states.
Internal versus External Control
Rather it has more to do with the decline in young people’s sense of personal control over their fate. Anxiety and depression correlate significantly with people’s sense of control or lack of control over their own lives. People who believe that they are in charge of their own fate are less likely to become anxious or depressed than those who believe that they are victims of circumstances beyond their control. Yet the data indicate that young people’s belief that they have control over their own destinies has declined sharply over the decades.
Their feeling of lack of control correlates with a shift from internal to external control. When children have ample opportunity to play they learn how to make decisions and solve problems on their own. But with the lack of opportunity for play, what they are taught in school is to yield their attention and decisions to authority. On the other hand, play encourages exploration on their own independent of direct adult guidance. They learn to solve their own problems, control their own lives, develop their own interests, and become competent in pursuit of their own interests. Without play, they experience diminished joy and are prevented from discovering and exploring the endeavors they would most love and increase the odds that they will suffer from anxiety, depression, and other disorders.
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
