Play makes us smarter
What happens to your brain when you play? For one thing, it releases endogenous (self-made, biologically made) opioids, which allows you to explore different contingencies and take on different roles.
Have you ever noticed that during or after play, you’re able to figure out something utterly unrelated? Or that previously prickly problems feel manageable, surmountable once you’ve had a playful moment, or several?
By play, I don’t necessarily mean you have to break out a board game, fire up a video game or go kick a ball around (though doing any of those things might help). By play, I am also referring to a more expansive definition — when you allow yourself to experience playfulness, lightness, ease; when you play around with an idea or a puzzle or paints or music, or with an animal or another person. In play, you are likely to explore, discover, try something out. Generally, there will be a sense of lightness or openness, but there might also be speed, mastery and a competitive spirit.
Silicon Valley tech companies and Hollywood studios have understood the value of play for years, providing employees with play spaces on their “campuses”. But I’ve always wondered about that — do the play spaces work? And why, if they do, don’t other companies, public and private, invest in play environments for their adult employees?
Can play possibly be serious business?
Research shows that play actually fires more than creativity and idea generation. It also makes us smarter.
Fascinated by the science behind what happens in the brain when people play, I recently came across the following:
“Play is generated through the connectivity of many brain areas, but one of the key brain areas is the PAG (periaqueductal gray — also known as the central gray), a brain stem area that is rich with neurons that make endogenous (self-made, biologically made) opioids.
Play evokes small amounts of opioid release into the system. These endogenous opioids are released in children and adults any time we engage in play.
That turns out to be a very important chemical state because there is something about having an abundance of these opioids released into the brain that allows other areas of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex (the area at the front that is responsible for executive function, which gives us the ability to make predictions, to assess contingencies, like “If I do this, then that happens. If I do that, then that happens.”).
The prefrontal cortex is often seen as a rigid executive of the whole brain. That’s one way to view it, but probably a better way to view it is that the prefrontal cortex works in concert with these other more primitive circuitries.
When the PAG 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.
So much of play is really about exploring things in a way that feels safe enough to explore. When endogenous opioids are in our system, when we are 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 we can assume for ourselves.”
That’s Andrew Huberman, speaking in the Huberman Lab podcast on the Power of Play (7 February 2022). Dr. Huberman is a neuroscientist and tenured professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Play, it turns out, makes it possible for our brains to explore different pathways or scenarios, and it gives us the capacity to take on different roles. During and after play, your brain creates the conditions for you to see things differently.
Play? It’s what makes new solutions and combinations possible; the genesis of innovation.
The above excerpt from the Huberman Lab podcast has been edited slightly for brevity. Check out the entire episode here.
