back to indexUsing Play to Rewire & Improve Your Brain | Huberman Lab Podcast #58
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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where we discuss science and science-based tools
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for everyday life.
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I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology
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and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
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Today, we are going to talk about the biology,
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psychology, and utility of play.
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Play is something that normally we associate
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with children's games, and indeed with being a child.
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Much of our childhood development centers around play,
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whether or not it's organized play or spontaneous play.
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But as adults, we also need to play.
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And today I'm going to talk about what I like to refer to
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as the power of play.
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The power of play resides in play's ability
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to change our nervous system for the better
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so that we can perform many activities,
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not just play activities, better.
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Play can also function as a way to explore new ways of being
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in different scenarios, in work, in relationships,
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in settings of all kind,
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and indeed also in the relationship to oneself.
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In fact, we are going to explore
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how assuming different identities
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during the same game of play or the same forms of play
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has been shown to be immensely powerful
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for allowing people to engage in more creative thinking
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and dynamic thinking and indeed to become better leaders
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and more effective workers and students and learners
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and happier people.
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I'm also going to cover some data that shows
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that learning to play properly
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can enhance one's ability to focus
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and is an active area of research
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for treatment of things like ADHD,
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attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
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just as a little sneak preview of where that's headed.
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Children who do not access enough play
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during certain stages of childhood
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are more prone to develop ADHD.
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The good news is all of us,
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regardless of whether or not we have a ADHD or not,
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whether or not we had ample access to play
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during childhood or not,
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can engage and grow the neural circuits
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that allow for this incredible power of play.
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And this can be done again at any stage of life.
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Today, we're going to talk about the protocols, the science.
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We will review all of that.
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And I promise you'll come away with a lot of knowledge,
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whether or not you're a parent, whether or not you're a child
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whether or not you're a person of any age,
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you're going to have tools and knowledge
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that will benefit you.
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Before we begin, I want to share with you the results
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of what I think to be an extremely exciting
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and certainly an actionable study that was just published
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in the journal Scientific Reports.
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This is an excellent journal, Nature Press Journal,
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peer reviewed, et cetera.
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And the findings center around what sorts of devices
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we happen to be reading on and accessing information on
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and how that's impacting our physiology
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and our capacity to learn.
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One of the more frequent questions I get
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is what are all these devices, phones, tablets, computers,
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video games, et cetera, doing to our brains?
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And finally, there's some good peer reviewed data
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to look at that and to address it directly.
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This study, first author Honma, H-O-N-M-A, Honma et al.,
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is entitled Reading on a Smartphone Affects Psi Generation,
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that's S-I-G-H, Psi Generation,
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Brain Activity and Comprehension.
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And to just summarize what they found,
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they ran a study on 34 healthy individuals
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and had them either read material on a smartphone
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or on regular printed paper or a book.
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And what they found is that comprehension on devices,
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in particular smartphones, is much poorer,
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much worse than it is when one reads on actual paper.
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Now, some of you may experience this yourselves.
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Now, they compared smartphones with paper
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and what they found was that
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when they looked at people's breathing,
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the normal patterns of breathing
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that people were engaging in
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did not differ between people reading on a smartphone
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or reading from paper.
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However, one particular feature of breathing did differ.
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And that particular feature
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is what we call physiological size.
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I've talked a lot about physiological size
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on this podcast and on social media.
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We had a terrific guest, Professor Jack Feldman
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from University of California, Los Angeles,
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who's a world expert in breathing and respiration
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and its impacts on the brain
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and how brain controls breathing and respiration.
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And what you can learn from that episode,
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or I'll just tell you again right now,
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is that every five minutes or so,
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whether or not we are asleep or awake,
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we do what's called a physiological sigh,
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which is a big, deep inhale,
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often a double inhale followed by a long exhale.
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It goes something like this.
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Now you might think, oh, I never breathe like that,
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Unless there's something severely wrong with your brainstem,
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every five minutes or so,
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you do one of these physiological sighs,
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which reopens all the little hundreds of millions of sacks
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in your lungs called the avioli
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that bring in more oxygen
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as a consequence of that big, deep double inhale.
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And then you are able to exhale carbon dioxide,
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offload carbon dioxide through that long exhale.
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I've also encouraged people to use the physiological sigh
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deliberately, not just spontaneously,
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as a way to reduce their stress quickly.
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And indeed my lab works on physiological sighs
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and has been exploring this.
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And they're quite effective in reducing
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our stress very fast.
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Reading on a smartphone seems to suppress
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physiological sighing.
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People aren't aware that it's happening, but it's happening.
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Some people have talked about so-called email apnea,
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which is the fact that people hold their breath
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while they email or while they text,
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and indeed many people do that.
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This is distinct from email or texting apnea.
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What's happening here is people are reading on the phone
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and for whatever reason,
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and I'll talk about what the likely reason is,
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but for whatever reason, they're suppressing their sighing.
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And as a consequence, the brain is not getting enough oxygen
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and is not offloading enough carbon dioxide.
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And another finding in this study
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was that the prefrontal cortex,
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an area of the brain that's involved in focus
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and attention and learning becomes hyperactive
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in a kind of desperate attempt to focus.
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All of this can be summarized by saying,
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if you happen to read on a device,
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whether or not it's a tablet,
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a standard computer screen of any kind,
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but in particular on a smartphone,
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regardless of how small or large that smartphone screen is,
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you want to remind yourself to engage
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in these physiological sighs fairly regularly.
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And it might even be better to just read the most,
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or at least the key issues and things
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that you're trying to learn about the key information
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from paper, either books or printed out material
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of some other sort.
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What's the underlying mechanism here?
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Well, one of the reasons I like this study so much
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is that it brings together two of my laboratories
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and my particular interests in neuroscience,
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which is how does our visual system and the aperture,
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meaning the size of our visual window,
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relate to our so-called autonomic function
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or our internal state?
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And basically what's happening here is
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as any of us bring our visual window in more narrowly,
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as we contract our visual window,
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which is exactly what happens
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when we're looking at a little smartphone in front of us,
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it seems to suppress the breathing apparatus
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because we know that physiological sighs
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are controlled by a specific set of neurons
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in the brainstem called the parafacial nucleus
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discovered by Dr. Jack Feldman.
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And so there must be a mechanism
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whereby when we tighten our visual window,
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we somehow, and we don't know yet how this happens,
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but somehow suppress the activity of these neurons
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in the parafacial nucleus
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that generate this physiological sighs.
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So again, you have two choices,
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or I suppose you have many choices,
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but two main choices to contend with this new information.
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One is that you remind yourself to engage in deep breathing
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and in particular physiological sighs
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every five minutes or so
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while reading anything or texting on your smartphone.
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The other would be, again,
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if there's material that you really need to learn
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for sake of regurgitation later
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or for something particularly important,
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try and read that from either a larger screen
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or even better would be from printed materials or books.
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Another reason I bring all that up
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is that it relates to a larger theme,
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which is that I get many, many questions about ADHD
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and about people's challenges with focus.
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And much of what we're told these days
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is that we are challenged with focus
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because of the hundreds of videos
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that we can see streaming by us in any moment on our phone,
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which probably is true.
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The fact that the information that we're reading
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on the internet and on our phones
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is emotionally disturbing or distressing in some way.
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And that probably is true as well in many cases.
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This study really points to the fact
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that independent of the information
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that we are looking at or consuming,
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independent whether or not it's movies or texts
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or anything of that sort,
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the mere size of the window, the aperture,
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the screen that we're looking at
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is also strongly impacting our ability
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to learn and remember information.
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So broaden that visual window, print things out,
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I didn't design the system.
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I always say, you know,
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however our visual system and respiratory system
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happened to evolve,
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I wasn't consulted at the design phase.
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This is just simply how your brain circuits work.
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So if you want to learn things, widen that visual window
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and even better print things out,
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pick up a book or read on a tablet even,
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but try and make that tablet larger
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than a smartphone screen size.
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Before we begin our discussion about the power of play,
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I'd like to emphasize that this podcast
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is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
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It is however, part of my desire and effort
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to bring zero cost to consumer information about science
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and science related tools to the general public.
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In keeping with that theme,
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I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens, also now called AG1.
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I started drinking Athletic Greens way back in 2012.
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And so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.
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Athletic Greens is an all-in-one
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vitamin mineral probiotic drink.
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The reason I started drinking it in 2012
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and the reason that I still drink it once or twice a day
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is that with Athletic Greens,
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I cover all of my basic foundational
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vitamin mineral probiotic needs.
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It's filled with adaptogens for recovery.
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The probiotics are particularly important
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because they encourage health of the so-called
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We're going to be talking a lot about the gut microbiome
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on this podcast in the weeks and months to come.
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But to make a long story short,
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we have a lot of bacteria living in our gut
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that are healthy bacteria that support things like
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digestion, immune system, metabolic function,
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hormone systems, and perhaps most interestingly to me,
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including mood, cognition, and so forth.
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The probiotics and Athletic Greens strongly support
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which I just referred to.
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If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,
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again also called AG1,
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to claim a special offer.
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They're giving away five free travel packs
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Vitamin D3 is extremely important
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We are told that we can get enough D3 from sun exposure,
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So supplementing with vitamin D3 is necessary
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for many, many people.
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And K2 is important for cardiovascular function,
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So again, if you go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman,
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the year supply vitamin D3K2,
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and of course your Athletic Greens.
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Today's episode is also brought to us by Roka.
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Roka makes sunglasses and eyeglasses
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that are of the absolute highest quality.
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I've spent a lifetime working on the visual system.
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And one of the many challenges
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I love it because I don't have to constantly be taking off
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Let's talk about play.
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Now in researching this episode,
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I thought that I was going to come across a bunch of papers
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that say this brain area connects to that brain area,
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which controls play in animals.
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And there's similar areas in babies and in adults.
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And indeed that's true.
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And we will talk about brain circuitry.
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But I think more importantly is to understand
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what is the utility of play?
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You know, why do we play when we're younger?
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Why do we tend to play less as we get older?
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And what in the world is play for?
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Some of us would be categorized as more playful.
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I'm sure that you know people like this.
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Maybe you are like this.
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People that can walk into a room,
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a social setting of any kind,
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and they seem to already kind of have a playful,
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maybe even a mischievous quality about them.
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We'll talk about mischief a little bit later.
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But they sort of look at an environment
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or a social setting as an opportunity
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for different kinds of novel interactions.
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Other people, and I'd probably put myself
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into this category,
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if I walk into a novel environment,
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I tend to be more in the mode of just assessing
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what that environment is like.
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I'm not a particularly spontaneously playful person,
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although around certain individuals
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I might be more spontaneously playful.
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We are all on a continuum of this kind of seriousness
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to playful nature.
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It turns out that all young animals, including humans,
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have more playfulness and tend to engage
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in more spontaneous play in their earlier years
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than in their later years.
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And therein lies a very interesting portal
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to understanding what the utility,
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what the purpose of play is.
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First of all, I want to lay down a couple of key facts
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about play that point to the fact
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that play is not just about games.
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Play is about much, much more.
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And play, and in particular, how we played as a child,
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and still how we can play as adults
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is really how we test and expand our potential roles
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in all kinds of interactions.
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One of the most important, interesting,
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and surprising features of play
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that I'd like everyone to know about
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is that it is homeostatically regulated.
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Some of you are familiar with the term homeostasis.
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Homeostasis is just this aspect of biological systems
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to try and remain in balance.
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If you stay awake for a long period of time,
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you tend to want to sleep for a long period of time.
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If you slept for a long period of time
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and you're very rested,
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then you tend to be very energetic the next day.
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And of course, I know people out there will immediately say,
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oh, well, if I sleep too long,
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then I'm groggy the next day.
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Of course, there are exceptions.
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But in general, sleep and wakefulness
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are in homeostatic balance.
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Thirst and water consumption are in homeostatic balance.
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If you don't drink any fluids for a while,
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you tend to get more thirsty.
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You drink fluids and your thirst tends to diminish.
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Likewise with food,
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likewise with most all motivated behaviors.
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Well, one of the most important discoveries
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of the last century was largely the work
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of a guy named Jak Pengsepp.
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No, it's not Jack, it's Jak Pengsepp,
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who really pioneered this understanding
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of the biology of play and relating that
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to the psychology of play in animals and humans.
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He's considered a kind of luminary in the field of play.
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And what a great title to have, right?
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If you could have a title and be a scientific luminary,
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you might as well be the play guy.
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In fact, he was known,
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and I'll get into this later as to why,
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but he was known as the rat tickler
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because he tickled rats and he actually found
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that rodents and animals of many kind
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generate laughter in response to tickling.
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And in fact, they don't have the capacity
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to tickle themselves,
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something we'll also talk about why that is.
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And he was called the rat tickler,
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but then he discovered that many species of animals
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engage in laughter in response to tickling
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and they tickle each other.
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And the reason you don't hear them laughing,
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no, you can't hear your dog laughing,
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that isn't laughing, it's something else,
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is that most animals besides humans
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laugh at kind of ultrasonic levels of auditory output,
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meaning the frequencies of sound
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are just too high for you to hear,
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but with the appropriate devices,
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he was able with his colleagues
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to isolate the so-called rat laughter.
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And then it turns out there's kitten laughter
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and there's puppy laughter,
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and of course there's human laughter.
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So Jak Pengsup was a very interesting
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and pioneering person in this field.
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And he also discovered
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that play is homeostatically regulated,
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meaning if animals, including children,
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are restricted from playing for a certain amount of time,
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they will play more when given the opportunity,
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in the same way that if I food restrict you
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for a long period of time,
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you will eat more when you are finally allowed to eat.
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And this is important because it moves this thing
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that we call play from the dimension
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of higher order functions or things that evolved recently,
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that are really kind of at the front edge
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of human evolution,
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deeper into the circuitry of the brain,
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whereby we say the brainstem,
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the kind of ancient parts of the brain
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are going to be involved.
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And in fact, that's the case.
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As we're going to learn later in the podcast,
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play is generated through the connectivity
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of many brain areas,
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but one of the key brain areas is an area called PAG,
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periaqueductal gray.
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The periaqueductal gray is a brainstem area,
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so it's pretty far back
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as the brain kind of transitions into the spinal cord.
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And it's rich with neurons that make endogenous opioids.
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So these are not the kinds of opioids
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that are causing the opioid crisis.
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These are neurons that you and I all have
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that release endogenous,
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meaning self-made or biologically made opioids.
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They go by names like enkephalin and things of that sort.
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Play evokes small amounts of opioid release into the system.
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They kind of dope you up a little bit,
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not so much as one would see if one were
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to take exogenous opioids.
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In fact, exogenous opioids, as we now know,
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are potentially very hazardous,
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highly high addiction potential, high overdose potential.
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They cause all sorts of problems.
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Yes, there are clinical uses for them,
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but they're causing a lot of problems nowadays.
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But these endogenous opioids are released
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in children and adults anytime we engage in play.
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And that turns out to be a very important chemical state
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because there's something about having an abundance
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of these endogenous opioids released into the brain
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that allows other areas of the brain,
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like the prefrontal cortex,
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the area of the front that's responsible
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for what we call executive function.
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Executive function is the ability to make predictions,
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to assess contingencies.
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Like if I do this, then that happens.
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If I do that, then that happens.
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Well, prefrontal cortex is often seen
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as a kind of rigid executive of the whole brain.
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That's one way to view it,
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but probably a better way to view it
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is that the prefrontal cortex works in concert
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with these other more primitive circuitries.
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And when the periaqueductal gray releases
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these endogenous opioids during play,
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the prefrontal cortex doesn't get stupid.
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It actually gets smarter.
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It develops the ability to take on different roles
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and explore different contingencies.
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And we're going to talk about role play later
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in different contexts.
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And what we will find is that so much of play
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is really about exploring things in a way
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that feels safe enough to explore, right?
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This is not what happens when we drive down the street
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or when we bike down the street.
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When we are headed to work commuting on our bicycle
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or walking or driving, we tend to be very linear
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and we tend to be very goal-directed.
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We're not going to just take a new street just because.
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We're not going to be spontaneously
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riding in the middle of the road
link |
and then on the sidewalk and then back and forth.
link |
Although I can remember as a kid,
link |
I was doing some of that.
link |
I liked to jump off curb cuts when I was a kid
link |
and then eventually I graduated, sorry to the cyclist,
link |
but I graduated to skateboarding.
link |
And then I looked on skateboarding, you're always kind
link |
of exploring terrain, but you know, as I got older,
link |
actually I find myself becoming much more linear.
link |
I just don't play with my commute very much.
link |
It's really just about getting to work and then working.
link |
When endogenous opioids are in our system,
link |
when we were in this mode of play,
link |
the prefrontal cortex starts seeing
link |
and exploring many more possibilities of how we interact
link |
with our environment, with others,
link |
and the roles that we can assume for ourselves.
link |
And so we're going to dissect one by one
link |
the different aspects of play, role play, social play,
link |
individual play, imaginary play, competitive play.
link |
There are enormous number of dimensions of play.
link |
And by the end of this episode,
link |
we're going to arrive at a very key feature.
link |
The key feature is one that's called
link |
your personal play identity.
link |
All of us have what we call a personal play identity.
link |
This personal play identity was laid down during development
link |
and it is the identity that you assume in playful scenarios.
link |
And it is the identity that you adopt
link |
in non-playful scenarios.
link |
The great news is that your personal play identity
link |
is plastic throughout your entire lifespan.
link |
You can adjust your personal play identity
link |
in ways that will benefit you in work and relationships
link |
and your overall level of happiness.
link |
We will discuss protocols and ways to do that.
link |
But I do want to give a nod to the late Jack,
link |
Jack, excuse me, Jack Pangstep, the rat tickler.
link |
And I also want to just give a nod to play generally.
link |
As we move forward in the discussion,
link |
what I'd love for everyone to do is to stop thinking
link |
about play as just a child activity,
link |
not just a sport related activity,
link |
but really as an exploration in contingencies.
link |
Again, it's an exploration of if I do A, what happens?
link |
If I do B, what happens?
link |
If someone else takes on behavior or attitude C,
link |
what am I going to do?
link |
And play is really where we can expand our catalog
link |
of potential outcomes and it can be enormously enriching.
link |
And indeed, as we'll talk about the tinkerers of the world,
link |
the true creatives,
link |
the people that build incredible technologies and art,
link |
and also they just have incredibly rich,
link |
emotional and intellectual and social lives
link |
all have a strong element of play.
link |
And so today I hope to convince you of some protocols
link |
that will allow you to expand your various roles in life
link |
through the portal of play.
link |
So we established that play is homeostatic,
link |
meaning we all need to do it.
link |
Many of us, including myself,
link |
haven't played that much as adults.
link |
We're all pretty busy.
link |
Number of us are stressed.
link |
We got a lot to do in life.
link |
But as children, most all of us engage in a lot of play.
link |
And in looking at the way that very young children
link |
and especially toddlers play, we can learn a lot
link |
because it reveals the fundamental rules
link |
by which the toddler brain interacts with the world.
link |
Now, one of the key things about the baby brain
link |
is that the baby brain somehow knows
link |
that it can't do everything in the world, right?
link |
If a baby needs something, it generally will cry
link |
or make some sort of vocalization
link |
or some sort of facial expression or combination of those.
link |
And the caretaker, whoever that may be, will provide it.
link |
This is an ancient hardwired mechanism
link |
whereby the so-called autonomic nervous system
link |
that generates stress
link |
will create this kind of whining and discomfort,
link |
maybe arriving, maybe the baby gets kind of red in the face,
link |
and the caretaker delivers something
link |
based on a good guess of what that baby needs.
link |
So maybe it's breast milk, maybe it's bottled milk,
link |
maybe it's a diaper change,
link |
maybe it's to be warmed up if the baby is cold,
link |
maybe it's to be cooled down if the baby is too warm,
link |
maybe if the baby's in its little onesie thing,
link |
it's feeling restricted and just wants to move
link |
and they'll get taken out of their crib or their stroller,
link |
whatever it is, and allowed to stretch out on the floor.
link |
Remember, the baby doesn't know exactly what it needs,
link |
it only knows the state of discomfort.
link |
And of course, we don't know exactly
link |
what babies and toddlers are thinking
link |
because they can't express themselves with language yet.
link |
But what's key to understand is the rule
link |
or the contingency that is set up in that scenario.
link |
In that scenario, the child feels some discomfort,
link |
expresses that discomfort verbally
link |
or through a facial expression or both,
link |
and then some force,
link |
some person from the outside world resolves it.
link |
And so the very young baby,
link |
and indeed many children up to certain ages,
link |
and let's confess, many adults,
link |
are not able to meet or adjust
link |
their internal states of stress,
link |
and so they look to things outside of them.
link |
That's the first rule, the fundamental rule
link |
that we all learn when we come into life,
link |
that when in a state of discomfort,
link |
to look outside our immediate biology,
link |
beyond the confines of our skin and find a solution,
link |
For adults, it might be a sip of alcohol, right?
link |
Probably not the best tool to relieve stress,
link |
but that's one that many people do, in fact, engage in.
link |
For the baby that's hungry,
link |
the bottle milk comes from the outside.
link |
As we gain more proficiency in moving through life
link |
and we can get things for ourselves,
link |
we still often bring things from the external world in
link |
to resolve this, what I'm calling autonomic discomfort
link |
or autonomic dysregulation.
link |
That's not a game, but that's a rule.
link |
As we advance from infant to toddler,
link |
we start to think more in terms of where we are
link |
and what we own relative to what's out there in the world.
link |
And now in the world of child psychology,
link |
there's a somewhat famous poem
link |
that was written by a research child psychologist.
link |
His name was Burton White,
link |
and he wrote a poem called The Toddler's Creed.
link |
The Toddler's Creed defines well
link |
what the rules and contingencies of play are
link |
in very young children.
link |
And it reveals to us just how narrow
link |
and limited their worldview is
link |
and how self-centered their world is.
link |
So The Toddler's Creed, read quickly,
link |
because I don't want to take up too much time with this,
link |
is if I want it, it's mine.
link |
If I give it to you and change my mind later, it's mine.
link |
For anyone that's played with a toddler,
link |
you can imagine this in your mind.
link |
If I can take it away from you, it's mine.
link |
If I had a little while ago, it's mine.
link |
If we are building something together,
link |
all the pieces are mine.
link |
If it looks just like mine, it's mine.
link |
If it's mine, it will never belong to anyone else,
link |
And of course, as we hear this,
link |
it sounds quite awful, right?
link |
And yet this is actually a reflection
link |
of what a healthy toddler would think about the world,
link |
that the objects and things,
link |
and even the people in the world are theirs,
link |
that they are actually possessions that belong to them.
link |
And of course, some people never actually transitioned
link |
beyond this stage of moral and social development.
link |
And there are indeed some adults
link |
that fit The Toddler's Creed.
link |
And you're welcome to share this with them
link |
if ever you think that it might be of benefit
link |
to their self-reflection.
link |
But in all seriousness, Burton White's Toddler's Creed
link |
is really grounded in this transition
link |
from when we are infants
link |
and we have to have things delivered to us,
link |
to the point where we are toddlers
link |
and we can access things in the world,
link |
but we tend to assume that they are all ours.
link |
And then the next stage is the really key stage
link |
as it relates to play.
link |
Because in the next stage of development
link |
is where young children
link |
start to interact with other children,
link |
and there's an exchange and a possession
link |
and then a letting go of certain things.
link |
Learning that not everything is yours
link |
and that the entire world is not about you
link |
is one of the key contingencies
link |
that is established during play.
link |
It's one of the key ways in which children go
link |
from being very self-centered
link |
and basically unable to engage with other kids for very long
link |
without some sort of eruption of crying
link |
and some sort of battle of kind of push-pull over an object
link |
to things like sharing and things like cooperative play.
link |
So as we transition from forms of play
link |
that are all about the self,
link |
that are all me, me, me, me, me, The Toddler's Creed,
link |
to forms of play that involve some discomfort
link |
in assuming roles that maybe we don't want
link |
and not getting what we want,
link |
it's really an opportunity for the brain
link |
to start to explore different roles that people take,
link |
how they work as individuals and as pairs
link |
and in larger groups.
link |
And to do that in a low stakes environment, right?
link |
You wouldn't want this to be worked out on the battlefield
link |
or when searching for food
link |
or in some high stakes environment
link |
where the survival of the species was important.
link |
It appears that these circuitries for play evolved
link |
so that rules and contingencies around who's most important,
link |
whether or not the group is important,
link |
whether or not individuals are going to be leaders
link |
or followers, et cetera,
link |
that can be explored in a low stakes environment.
link |
Now, there are hundreds of different types of play
link |
and hundreds of different types of contingency testing,
link |
but the key theme here is that play allows children
link |
and adults for that matter to explore different outcomes
link |
in a kind of low stakes environment.
link |
If you're playing a board game or a card game,
link |
you might get really into that game,
link |
but unless there's a lot of money on the table, so to speak,
link |
or you're really playing for something important,
link |
or unless your ego is swollen
link |
way out of proportion to reality,
link |
if you lose, you might not feel good about it,
link |
but it's truly not the end of the world.
link |
And if you win, you might feel really good about it,
link |
but you're not really incredible.
link |
You were just incredible in that particular situation
link |
for that particular moment.
link |
It doesn't really transform the rest of your life
link |
unless that game is of a particular type,
link |
for sport, for instance, and we'll talk about sport later.
link |
So the key theme here is that play is contingency testing.
link |
Play is contingency testing under conditions
link |
where the stakes are sufficiently low
link |
that individuals should feel comfortable
link |
assuming different roles,
link |
even roles that they're not entirely comfortable with
link |
in their outside life.
link |
And that all relates again
link |
to the release of these endogenous opioids
link |
in this brain center, periaqueductal gray,
link |
and the way that it allows the prefrontal cortex
link |
in a very direct way.
link |
I mean, truly, it allows it in a biological way
link |
to expand the number of operations that it can run
link |
and start thinking about, oh, well, okay,
link |
normally I'm kind of a loner and I like to read and work
link |
and hang out alone, maybe even play alone,
link |
but, oh, okay, I'll play a board game or a game of tennis
link |
where I have a partner and we're going to play as partners
link |
against two other people.
link |
Okay, that's a little uncomfortable, but I'll do it.
link |
And in doing that, you discover certain ways
link |
in which you are proficient
link |
and certain ways in which you are less proficient.
link |
You discover that the other person
link |
actually tends to cheat a little bit
link |
or the other person is extremely rigid about the rules
link |
or maybe it is extremely rigid
link |
about the way they organize their pieces on the board
link |
or you're crossing the line
link |
into your side of the tennis court.
link |
There are all sorts of things that we learn
link |
in these rather low stakes scenarios.
link |
That's the key theme here.
link |
So before I continue, I just want to point to a tool
link |
that anyone can use,
link |
but in particular, the less playful of the group.
link |
And I would put myself into this category.
link |
Yeah, and I'm not somebody
link |
who really engages in spontaneous play.
link |
I enjoy sports, I enjoy exercise,
link |
but that is distinct from play
link |
because the sports and exercise that I engage in,
link |
I take pretty seriously.
link |
They're not low stakes for me.
link |
Actually, I put a lot of importance on them.
link |
Actually, as I'm saying all this,
link |
I probably should put a little less importance on them
link |
and have a little more fun with those.
link |
And yet, what I'm about to tell you is that anyone
link |
and everyone can benefit from engaging
link |
in a bit more of this playful mindset.
link |
The playful mindset is not necessarily about smiling
link |
and jumping around or being silly.
link |
That's not it at all.
link |
It's not the Tigger character from Winnie the Pooh,
link |
necessarily, it could be,
link |
but it's really about allowing yourself
link |
to expand the number of outcomes
link |
that you're willing to entertain
link |
and to think about how you relate
link |
to those different outcomes.
link |
So what this means is putting yourself into scenarios
link |
where you might not be the top performer, right?
link |
Playing a game that you're not really that good at.
link |
I had this experience recently,
link |
friends that like to play cards,
link |
they like to do some low stakes gambling.
link |
This is not an illegal gambling ring,
link |
they play for trivial things.
link |
And I generally don't buy into the game.
link |
I generally don't play,
link |
mostly because they end up winning
link |
and taking whatever it is that I have.
link |
But in the mode of assuming a more playful spirit,
link |
the idea would be,
link |
well, if the stakes are low enough,
link |
then to play simply for the sake of playing,
link |
because there's something to learn there
link |
about the other people in the group and about oneself
link |
and how one reacts to things like
link |
someone who's clearly trying to take everybody's money
link |
or somebody who is clearly trying to cheat
link |
or somebody who's clearly very, very rigid
link |
about every last detail,
link |
including how the cards are dealt and shuffled, right?
link |
There is learning in this exploration.
link |
And that is at a biological level,
link |
the prefrontal cortex
link |
starting to entertain different possibilities,
link |
starting to entertain different outcomes
link |
in this low stakes way.
link |
And if you think about it,
link |
that's not something that we allow ourselves
link |
Even if we listen to new forms of music
link |
or we go see new art or new movies,
link |
those are new experiences,
link |
but that's not us making new predictions
link |
about what's going to happen next.
link |
It's not the brain working to figure out new possibilities.
link |
And so you can immediately see how
link |
just a small increase in your willingness
link |
to put yourself into conditions
link |
where you don't understand all the rules, perhaps,
link |
or you're not super proficient at something,
link |
but you enter it because it is low stakes.
link |
And because there is information
link |
to learn about yourself and others
link |
could start to open up these prefrontal cortex circuits.
link |
And when I say open up,
link |
I don't mean that literally
link |
there's an opening in your skull.
link |
What I mean is that your prefrontal cortex
link |
can work in very rigid ways.
link |
Meaning if A, then B.
link |
If I go down this street,
link |
turn left and go that way to work, it is fast.
link |
If I go down the other street, it's slow.
link |
If there's a traffic jam there, I'm going to go there,
link |
but it's starting to explore different possibilities.
link |
And there are very, very few opportunities in life
link |
to explore contingencies in this low stakes way,
link |
such that it engages neuroplasticity
link |
of the prefrontal cortex.
link |
So play is powerful at making your prefrontal cortex
link |
more plastic, more able to change in response to experience,
link |
but not just during the period of play,
link |
but in all scenarios,
link |
because you get one prefrontal cortex.
link |
You don't get a prefrontal cortex just for play.
link |
You get a prefrontal cortex that engages in everything.
link |
I will layer on some more concrete aspects of tools.
link |
if you're somebody that doesn't consider yourself
link |
particularly playful, consider,
link |
and maybe even engage in just a little bit of play
link |
in some way that is of discomfort to you
link |
with the understanding
link |
that is increasing your prefrontal cortical plasticity.
link |
Another really interesting and important aspect of play
link |
is so-called play postures.
link |
These are seen in animals and these are seen in humans.
link |
And for those of you that are watching this podcast
link |
on YouTube, I'll do my best to adopt them here.
link |
For those of you that are listening,
link |
you'll just have to imagine them in your mind's eye.
link |
But Jaak Pangsepp and indeed Darwin himself
link |
studied these play postures that all animals engage in.
link |
Perhaps the most familiar one is seen in dogs and in wolves
link |
where they will lower their head to the ground
link |
and they'll put their paws out in front of them
link |
and they will make eye contact
link |
with another typically dog or wolf
link |
to so-called call the play.
link |
Now, when they do this posture,
link |
it's obvious that they're lowering themselves.
link |
They're not in an aggressive stance
link |
because they're lowering their head.
link |
And this is universally known among canines as play posture.
link |
There's some famous videos online.
link |
You can look these up of dogs actually doing this with bears
link |
that they're confronted with.
link |
And the bears, at least in these videos,
link |
in exchange also lowering their head
link |
and there you see bear dog playful interactions.
link |
Now, you always have to be cautious with bears in general.
link |
I would say you have to be cautious with bears.
link |
But this speaks to the universality of this bowing,
link |
this sort of what some people call the puppy bow
link |
or the play bow that dogs do.
link |
It turns out that humans do this as well,
link |
although in a different form,
link |
I'm sure there are some that go
link |
into the down dog play posture,
link |
but more typically when humans want to play,
link |
they will do a subtle or not so subtle head tilt.
link |
The head tilt with eyes open is considered
link |
the universal head and facial expression posture
link |
of play in humans.
link |
So when two people see one another,
link |
if they are aggressive towards one another,
link |
they will assume certain facial expressions and postures.
link |
But if they're feeling playful towards one another,
link |
oftentimes they'll tip their head to the side
link |
just a little bit and they'll open their eyes.
link |
They might even raise their eyebrows briefly.
link |
This has been seen again and again and again.
link |
Another hardwired feature of so-called play postures
link |
is what's called soft eyes.
link |
When animals are aggressive or when they're sad,
link |
they tend to reduce the size of their eye openings
link |
by basically making their eyelids closer together somewhat,
link |
but keeping their eyes together.
link |
In particular for aggression,
link |
they'll bring their eyes towards
link |
what we call a vergence eye movement,
link |
bringing it towards the center
link |
that actually narrows the aperture of the visual field.
link |
When people or animals want to engage in play,
link |
they tend to open their eyelids somewhat
link |
and they tend to purse their lips just a little bit.
link |
So it's not like throwing your lips like this,
link |
it's pursing their lips,
link |
they'll open their eyes a little bit
link |
and they'll often do the head tilt as well,
link |
sometimes with a little bit of a smile.
link |
These are reflexive, these are not trained up.
link |
Children do this, adults do this, dogs, wolves do this,
link |
even certain birds will do this.
link |
Most birds have eyes on the side of their heads,
link |
but they do a sort of form of this soft eyes approach.
link |
And certainly in raptors, you see a softening of the eyes
link |
and indeed raptors like hawks and eagles,
link |
they actually do have a certain form of play,
link |
but only early in life.
link |
The other thing that we see during play
link |
are what are called partial postures.
link |
Partial postures are a kind of play enactment
link |
of postures that would otherwise be threatening.
link |
So a partial posture that we see during play
link |
in animals and humans that relates to aggressive play,
link |
so things like wrestling or things like rough
link |
and tumble play, which is very common in animals
link |
and kids and some adults,
link |
is that because there's going to be a physical interaction,
link |
in animals what will happen is they will march
link |
toward one another often very slowly,
link |
but rather than having their hair up,
link |
which we call pyloerection,
link |
which is when the hair goes up,
link |
animals do this to make themselves look bigger.
link |
Think about the cat that's trying to look bigger
link |
or an animal that's being aggressive,
link |
trying to look bigger in the presence of a foe,
link |
a different animal that they're either going to try
link |
and kill or fight in some way,
link |
even if it's to defend themselves.
link |
Partial postures occur when animals will approach
link |
one another, but they'll keep their fur down.
link |
Humans will do this too.
link |
They were approached during play,
link |
but unless it's highly competitive play,
link |
like a football game or a boxing match,
link |
they will actually shrink their body size somewhat.
link |
We have hair on our bodies, some of us more than others,
link |
and that hair is capable of pyloerection.
link |
That's the hair standing up on end phenomenon,
link |
but most of us don't have enough hair on our bodies
link |
that we can actually use that to make ourselves larger.
link |
So what you see with people who are about to engage in play
link |
is they tend to make their body a little bit smaller
link |
unless they are highly competitive
link |
and highly competitive play is its own distinct form of play
link |
that we'll talk about later, such as during sport,
link |
when the stakes are high.
link |
A Super Bowl football game,
link |
I'm revealing my ignorance about sports here.
link |
The Super Bowl, as it's typically called,
link |
is a very high stakes game, right?
link |
Salaries depend on it, sponsorships depend on it,
link |
it's on television, reputations depend on it.
link |
So that's not really playing a game.
link |
That's playing a very high stakes game
link |
and there you're not going to see these partial postures.
link |
You're not going to see soft eyes and tilting of the head,
link |
at least not between the opposing players on the team.
link |
You're going to see quite the opposite,
link |
grunting, screaming, shouldering, people not blinking,
link |
lowering their eyes or rather shrinking their eyes down
link |
to appear more aggressive, these kinds of things,
link |
staring right through the other person,
link |
verbal threats, et cetera.
link |
So that's not really play,
link |
even though we say they're playing a game of football,
link |
it's very high stakes play.
link |
What I'm referring to here is when it's fairly low stakes
link |
and we see this again in animals and humans.
link |
So there are many, many of these partial postures.
link |
Again, they happen spontaneously.
link |
So if someone ever looks at you
link |
and they tilt their head a little bit
link |
and they raise their eyebrows
link |
and they maybe smile a little bit,
link |
they're looking at you playfully.
link |
That's the universal human exchange of, I want to play.
link |
Do you want to play?
link |
There's another play expression
link |
that is considered the most extreme of the,
link |
come on, let's play expressions and postures.
link |
And this is one that's seen in a lot of primates
link |
and indeed in some humans as well.
link |
And that's the eyes wide open
link |
and believe it or not, tongue out.
link |
It's that kind of silly thing.
link |
That's not, I don't think that I've ever done that before.
link |
Just that kind of thing is basically
link |
what primate species of all kinds,
link |
and indeed we are old world primates as well,
link |
do when they want to say, I'm definitely here to play
link |
and that's why I'm here.
link |
Okay, it has this kind of silly look or connotation,
link |
but if you watch chimpanzees
link |
or you look at bonobos
link |
or even in the so-called new world monkeys,
link |
which tend to be the smaller monkeys,
link |
old world monkeys tend to be the ones that in general
link |
see the world as we do.
link |
They have what we call trichromacy.
link |
They're the ones that often can look very human-like.
link |
The new world monkeys tend to be the little ones.
link |
In general, I'll give you a little trick here,
link |
a little tool based on primatology.
link |
If you see a monkey and it's making very slow movements
link |
or you see an ape of any kind
link |
it's making very slow movements,
link |
very likely to be an old world primate.
link |
If you see a monkey and it's making very quick movements,
link |
like it's doing this kind of thing,
link |
like it's like a, could be a squirrel monkey,
link |
could be a marmoset, likely to be a new world monkey.
link |
And they don't see the world the same way we do.
link |
They see the world more like a dog.
link |
They don't really see reds.
link |
They see reds as orange, et cetera.
link |
Okay, that's not a hard and fast rule
link |
and I'm sure the primatologists are going to come after me
link |
with whatever primatologists come after you
link |
with monkey biscuits or something like that.
link |
But in general, it's a good rule if you're at the zoo
link |
and you see a slow moving monkey with slow deliberate
link |
gestures kind of moves its eyes,
link |
makes eye contact every once in a while,
link |
those tend to be the old world primates.
link |
Those kind of jittery ones that look like
link |
they're really nervous, wrapping their tail
link |
and kind of hiding there in a little bundle.
link |
Those tend to be the new world monkeys.
link |
Okay, again, not a black and white type division,
link |
but that'll get you most of the way.
link |
So the whole purpose of these partial postures
link |
or the tongue out thing is to limit power in deliberate ways
link |
to really take bodily expressions that could be portrayed
link |
or could be interpreted as aggressive
link |
or as threatening or as wanting to mate
link |
or as wanting to do anything for that matter
link |
and to limit the power with which they are expressed
link |
in very deliberate ways.
link |
So that's the putting the hair down
link |
despite getting into a fighting stance.
link |
That's saying let's fight,
link |
but I'm not really here to fight fight.
link |
It's low stakes fighting.
link |
Like if I pin you, then I'll let you go.
link |
Or if you pin me, then you ought to let me go.
link |
And so immediately you can start to see how play
link |
starts to call into action social dynamics
link |
in which both parties have to make some sort of agreement
link |
about how high the stakes are.
link |
Now, the failures to do this are also very informative
link |
in how we develop in social groups.
link |
And this also can inform why some people
link |
really play well with others and other people don't.
link |
And some people seem to get along well with groups
link |
and can handle other people.
link |
And some people are very rigid.
link |
In fact, I have an anecdote about this.
link |
When I was a kid, we used to play this game.
link |
It's not a game I suggest,
link |
but we used to do what were called dirt-clawed wars.
link |
So a friend of mine, his parents were generally not home
link |
So we must've been somewhere around 10 or 11 years old.
link |
And we would set up these two big dirt mounds.
link |
We would shovel them to big dirt mounds
link |
on two sides of the yard.
link |
And then we would just take dirt clods
link |
and we'd throw them at one another
link |
and just have dirt-clawed wars.
link |
Again, not suggesting this.
link |
I'm not responsible for what happens if you do,
link |
but there were rules.
link |
And the rules were, for instance,
link |
you couldn't pack rocks into the dirt clods
link |
and you could run across to the other side
link |
and you could jump on the other person's mountain.
link |
You could throw dirt clods in there.
link |
I guess this is the stuff that we thought was entertaining.
link |
But if someone got hit in the head,
link |
generally there was an unspoken rule
link |
that you kind of stop and see whether or not
link |
they were damaged or not before you'd continue.
link |
You couldn't continue pelting them.
link |
And of course people broke this rule.
link |
In fact, I remember one kid, I'm not going to name him
link |
because actually he's grown into a very prominent
link |
and functional adult, but he got hit once in the head.
link |
And then I think someone had thrown a dirt clod
link |
shortly thereafter.
link |
And all of a sudden he just went into a rage,
link |
picking up rocks and sticks and attacking another kid.
link |
And so clearly that was a case in which
link |
the rules of the game were now being violated,
link |
but it served a very important purpose.
link |
There was the typical thing that there were some tears,
link |
I think, as I recall from one kid or the other,
link |
there was like snot coming out of the nose
link |
and turning bright red.
link |
The parents had to say something,
link |
or maybe there was a phone call.
link |
I don't quite recall how it got resolved.
link |
But the idea is that there's an agreed upon set of rules
link |
about how high the stakes are
link |
and what we're all going to do.
link |
And this is separate from sport
link |
where there are clearly defined rules
link |
about what's out of bounds, what's in bounds,
link |
what sorts of behaviors will get you a yellow card
link |
or a red card, for instance, on the soccer field.
link |
All animals, including humans,
link |
are doing this low stakes contingency testing
link |
and all animals, including humans you will find,
link |
start to up the stakes.
link |
And inevitably in group play,
link |
one member of the group will kind of break rules.
link |
You see this also in puppies.
link |
So for instance, puppies will bite one another
link |
with those sharp little needle-like puppy teeth.
link |
I remember when Costello had those teeth,
link |
those things were so darn sharp.
link |
And puppies will yelp
link |
when one of their litter mates bites them.
link |
That yelp actually serves
link |
a very important inhibitory function,
link |
this is well-defined,
link |
to tell the other one that's too tough.
link |
And this is how animals learn soft bite, okay?
link |
If they don't get that feedback from other litter mates,
link |
they never actually learn what's too hard and what's soft.
link |
And so humans do this as well.
link |
Now you can look at your adult counterparts,
link |
and indeed we should probably look at ourselves and ask,
link |
did we learn proper play contingency when we were younger?
link |
Do we tend to take things too seriously?
link |
Do we tend to overreact aggressively
link |
when other people are clearly engaging in playful jabbing
link |
or sarcasm or things of that sort?
link |
So each of you will have a different experience of this,
link |
but the point is that play serves many functions.
link |
It's not just about the self,
link |
it's also about interactions between multiple people.
link |
It's about rule testing and low stakes contingency.
link |
Rule breaking also serves an important role
link |
as is with the example of the dirt-clawed war,
link |
puppies biting other puppies, et cetera.
link |
And last but not least,
link |
there are different forms of play
link |
that help us establish who we will become as adults.
link |
One of the more powerful of these is role play.
link |
When children and sometimes adults
link |
will take on different roles
link |
that are distinct from their natural world roles
link |
in order to, for instance, establish hierarchies.
link |
So someone's going to be the leader
link |
and someone's going to be the follower.
link |
Someone will be dominant and someone will be submissive.
link |
Someone will work alone, other people will work in a group.
link |
These kinds of role-playing are, again,
link |
ways in which the prefrontal cortex
link |
has to expand the number of operations.
link |
In neuroscience, we call these algorithms
link |
that it has to run in order to make predictions.
link |
You have to take in a lot of information
link |
about your environment all the time and make predictions.
link |
But if you are suddenly cast into a new role,
link |
well, then you definitely have to make even more predictions
link |
from a different standpoint.
link |
So these are very powerful for teaching the brain
link |
I had a sister growing up,
link |
I still have a sister, fortunately,
link |
and she and her friends largely played
link |
with dolls and doll houses in the room next door,
link |
and they would take on different roles.
link |
In fact, some kids, if they play alone,
link |
will start to take on the role of leader
link |
by taking on an imaginary or creating an imaginary friend.
link |
And my apologies to my sibling, but for a long time,
link |
she had an imaginary friend.
link |
Eventually, that imaginary friend disappeared.
link |
I don't know the science around imaginary friends
link |
and what makes them disappear or not
link |
at what stage of development,
link |
but imaginary friends are pretty common.
link |
And that's just another way of being able to
link |
boss somebody around if that's your thing
link |
or to engage in cooperative play.
link |
So we can look at this stage of development
link |
we call childhood, and we can look at each stage of it,
link |
and we can say, wow,
link |
there are all these different dimensions of play
link |
that really are about testing out
link |
how we feel, comfortable or uncomfortable,
link |
how we react, good or bad,
link |
how we react with stress or with glee
link |
when others behave in certain ways.
link |
And so what I'm hoping is coming through
link |
is that play is not just about having fun.
link |
Play is about testing.
link |
It's about experimenting
link |
and it's about expanding your brain's capacity.
link |
And that's true early in development
link |
and it's true throughout the lifespan.
link |
So at this point in the discussion,
link |
I want to take a step back,
link |
look at the biology and neurochemistry of play
link |
just a little bit.
link |
And in doing that, really define what is effective play.
link |
If the goal of play is to explore different contingencies
link |
in low stakes environments
link |
and to expand the function of our prefrontal cortex
link |
so that we can see new possibilities
link |
and new ways of being become more flexible,
link |
more creative, more effective outside of the games of play
link |
or the arenas of play, I should say.
link |
Well, then we should be asking,
link |
how do I know if I'm playing?
link |
How do I know if I'm playing correctly?
link |
Turns out there's an answer to that.
link |
Earlier, I referred to this brain area,
link |
the periaqueductal gray that releases opioids,
link |
endogenous opioids into our brain and body
link |
and tends to relax us a bit.
link |
It actually is what leads to these things
link |
like soft eyes and head tilts
link |
and puppies making puppy postures and things of that sort
link |
and how that opens up the number of different functions
link |
or algorithms that the prefrontal cortex can run.
link |
But there's another piece of the puzzle,
link |
which is for something to genuinely be play and playful
link |
and for it to have this effect of expanding our brain
link |
and engaging neuroplasticity of really changing our brains
link |
so that we can see and engage in more possible behaviors
link |
and thoughts, et cetera.
link |
We also have to have low amounts of adrenaline,
link |
so-called epinephrine in our brain and body.
link |
Now, the background science for this is quite extensive,
link |
but for those of you that are interested
link |
in papers and manuscripts,
link |
perhaps the best one is a review published in neuroscience
link |
and biobehavioral reviews by the very Jak Pengsep,
link |
although he has a co-author, which is Steven Siviy, S-I-V-I-Y.
link |
I'll provide a link to this in the caption show notes.
link |
And the title of this paper is
link |
In Search of the Neurobiological Substrates
link |
for Social Playfulness in Mammalian Brains.
link |
And it's a quite extensive review,
link |
but it basically boils down to some key findings
link |
whereby any sorts of drugs or behaviors or scenarios
link |
that increase levels of adrenaline too much
link |
will tend to inhibit play.
link |
And drugs and scenarios,
link |
and I'm not suggesting recreational drugs here,
link |
but these were experiments that were done
link |
in the laboratory setting
link |
that increase the endogenous opioid output
link |
will tend to increase playfulness.
link |
And so really the state of mind
link |
that one needs to adopt when playing is,
link |
first of all, you have to engage in the play,
link |
whatever it happens to be,
link |
with some degree of focus and seriousness,
link |
and focus and seriousness in the neurobiological context
link |
generally means epinephrine,
link |
being able to focus is largely reliant
link |
on things like adrenaline, epinephrine,
link |
but also the presence of dopamine,
link |
which is a molecule that generates motivation
link |
and focus in concert with epinephrine,
link |
but also that these endogenous opioids be liberated.
link |
And it's really the low stakes feature of play
link |
that allows those endogenous opioids to be liberated.
link |
What do I mean by that?
link |
Well, if you are very, very concerned about the outcome,
link |
like you've put a lot of money on the table in a given game,
link |
or you're a football player in the Super Bowl,
link |
or you're playing a game for which,
link |
defeating the other person or your team winning
link |
is absolutely crucial to you,
link |
well then that's not really going
link |
to engage the play circuitry.
link |
On the contrary, if you're engaging in those same behaviors
link |
or any other behavior in a way
link |
that you're simply there to explore,
link |
but you don't have high levels of adrenaline in your system,
link |
you're not stressed about the potential outcome,
link |
well then that constitutes play.
link |
Now that's somewhat obvious on the one hand,
link |
that you take seriously what you take seriously,
link |
and you can be more playful about things
link |
that you don't take so seriously,
link |
but what is absolutely not obvious
link |
is that the state of playfulness
link |
is actually what allows you to perform best
link |
because the state of playfulness offers you the opportunity
link |
to engage in novel types of behaviors and interactions
link |
that you would not otherwise be able to access
link |
if you are so focused on the outcome, okay?
link |
So a state of playfulness is absolutely critical,
link |
not just during play,
link |
but during competitive scenarios of any kind.
link |
I actually started to cultivate a practice related to this
link |
when I was in college,
link |
I had this general practice
link |
of when I wanted to learn something,
link |
I would tell myself
link |
that it was the most important information in the world
link |
and that I was very, very interested in it,
link |
and I would kind of lie to myself and say,
link |
oh, I'm super interested in, I won't name the topics,
link |
but super interested in this or super interested in that,
link |
and I could sort of delude myself into being hyper-focused
link |
on whatever it is that I was learning
link |
in ways that surprised me.
link |
However, when we are hyper-focused on something
link |
and we are rigidly attached to the outcome,
link |
we can't engage in flexible thinking.
link |
So it's a great tool to be hyper-focused on something
link |
and take it very, very seriously
link |
when we're simply trying to learn things
link |
by kind of rote memory, learn things and regurgitate,
link |
learn and regurgitate of the sort that,
link |
frankly, a lot of schooling involves.
link |
But if we are trying to get better at something,
link |
we sort of hit a wall in athletic performance
link |
or in cognitive performance
link |
where we're not creative enough,
link |
or we're finding, let's just use a sports example,
link |
that we only have a certain number of moves
link |
that we can deploy
link |
or a certain number of swings of the racket
link |
that we can deploy.
link |
The way to actually expand your practice
link |
is to engage in this kind of low stakes thinking.
link |
The idea that, well, I'm just going to kind of play
link |
I'm going to explore in a way that it doesn't really matter
link |
if the ball goes back over the net.
link |
It doesn't really matter if the ball goes in the hole.
link |
And it's counterintuitive because you think,
link |
no, the thing that we need to do is drill
link |
and drill and drill and drill.
link |
And indeed there's a place for that.
link |
But this mode of play with modest levels
link |
of endogenous opioids being released in our system,
link |
plus low levels of adrenaline, epinephrine,
link |
low levels of epinephrine and adrenaline
link |
are possible only when the stakes are low enough
link |
that we're not stressed.
link |
Well, that combination really allows the prefrontal cortex
link |
to explore different possibilities
link |
in ways that can truly expand our capabilities over time.
link |
Now, this has been seen again and again,
link |
also in the business sector,
link |
some of the more challenging,
link |
or I should say competitive companies to get jobs at
link |
are very interested in hiring people
link |
that as children were so-called tinkerers.
link |
And actually NASA was first famous for this,
link |
that many of the people that achieved great success
link |
in engineering at NASA,
link |
when they looked back into their childhood histories,
link |
those people tended to be tinkerers.
link |
They were people that would kind of play with things
link |
in a way that wasn't about rigidly following a recipe
link |
or an instruction manual.
link |
Great cooks discover new forms of food,
link |
indeed created entire genres of food
link |
by way of being tinkerers.
link |
Musicians do this.
link |
I grew up playing various sports,
link |
but skateboarding was one
link |
that I was particularly involved in for a long time.
link |
One of the greatest skateboarders of all time is,
link |
some of you may recognize his name
link |
is the great Rodney Mullen.
link |
And Rodney was kind of famous for evolving the sport
link |
and continuing to evolve the sport
link |
in ways that no one could predict,
link |
using skateboards in all sorts of ways
link |
that no one had thought of previously.
link |
And of course there are other skateboarders
link |
that did that as well,
link |
but he's particularly well-known for that.
link |
And his process is his own.
link |
I can't speak to it too much,
link |
but he was also known as a kind of a tinkerer
link |
as somebody who would spend a lot of time
link |
just kind of flipping the board
link |
and just flipping it in the air
link |
and watching the ways in which it flipped
link |
and kind of studying the physics of it really
link |
and expanding on his existing understanding
link |
of what could happen on a skateboard
link |
by way of just playing.
link |
Now he took it very seriously,
link |
but it's this kind of razor's edge
link |
between taking something very seriously,
link |
but also tinkering and playing and exploring
link |
and just seeing what happens and kind of like,
link |
well, let's just see what happens if we did this.
link |
That mindset is extremely powerful
link |
to export from this thing that we call play
link |
into what we could call more serious endeavors
link |
of one's occupation or sport,
link |
whether or not it's behind a desk
link |
or whether or not it's running around on a field
link |
or engineering, any endeavor.
link |
And so the whole purpose of this episode on play is,
link |
yes, on the one hand to illustrate
link |
the incredible evolutionary utility of play
link |
for setting up the self and relation of the self to others,
link |
indeed for setting up cultures entirely
link |
because cultures will watch sport together
link |
or they'll celebrate their team winning.
link |
I mean, World Cup, I've never been a big soccer fan,
link |
even though my dad is Argentine, but it's incredible.
link |
I mean, the entire world kind of lights up
link |
and gets engaged around whether or not their team,
link |
their country is going to win.
link |
The Olympics also being another example.
link |
But play and sport are not quite the same
link |
as I've pointed out before.
link |
And for all of us who are thinking about tools
link |
and things that we can extract from science
link |
to enrich our lives, I would say,
link |
for those of you that are already playing
link |
on a regular basis in one form or another, terrific.
link |
Start to expand other forms of play,
link |
in particular forms of play
link |
that involve new groups of individuals.
link |
So if you're somebody that typically plays one-on-one
link |
with somebody, try to expand into playing as teams.
link |
If you're somebody who only plays alone,
link |
then try to expand into playing
link |
in perhaps one-on-one first and in groups.
link |
This is the way that your brain learns
link |
and evolves and changes and gets better.
link |
And I raise this because another one
link |
of the top 10 questions I get is,
link |
how can I keep my brain young?
link |
How can I continue to learn?
link |
How can I get better in school, in sport, in life,
link |
in relationships, et cetera, emotionally, cognitively,
link |
and on and on and on.
link |
And yes, there are supplements
link |
that can support neuroplasticity.
link |
Yes, there are brain games and apps
link |
that can support neuroplasticity.
link |
But if you really want to engage neuroplasticity at any age,
link |
what you need to do is return to the same sorts
link |
of practices and tools that your nervous system
link |
naturally used throughout development
link |
and that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years
link |
to trigger this thing that we call neuroplasticity.
link |
And the reason this is so important is
link |
because it starts to move us away
link |
from what some people called hacks.
link |
I define hacks as using one thing for a different purpose
link |
to kind of get a shortcut.
link |
I don't really like the term, frankly,
link |
and I don't like it because it's not grounded
link |
in any biological mechanism.
link |
But when we look at play,
link |
we can say play is the portal to plasticity.
link |
Play at every stage of life
link |
is the way in which we learned the rules
link |
for that stage of life.
link |
And play is the way in which we were able
link |
to test how we might function in the real world context.
link |
So play is powerful.
link |
And we could even say that play
link |
is the most powerful portal to plasticity.
link |
The reason for that is that yes,
link |
this high opioid, low epinephrine or adrenaline state
link |
is what opens up play.
link |
But then inside of the arena of play,
link |
when the prefrontal cortex is running
link |
all these different possibilities in this low stakes way,
link |
but with some degree of focus,
link |
there are a number of other chemicals that are deployed.
link |
Things like brain derived and trophic factor
link |
and other growth factors that actually trigger
link |
the rewiring of brain circuits that allow for it to expand.
link |
And indeed, that's what is neuroplasticity.
link |
If you're interested in those chemicals
link |
and the kind of arena of things that happen
link |
when one engages in neuroplasticity,
link |
there's a vast literature out there.
link |
But one of the more popular books
link |
that I think is quite good is from my friend
link |
and colleague, John Rady,
link |
who's a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School.
link |
He wrote the book Spark a few years back.
link |
And I think it's still very relevant.
link |
And John talks about the important role
link |
that play exerts in the neuroplasticity process
link |
and points to a number of different protocols
link |
that one can engage in.
link |
He also points to the importance
link |
of navigating new environments
link |
to not just go on the same hike every week
link |
or take the same walk,
link |
but actually get into new novel environments.
link |
So you're starting to sense a theme here.
link |
There's novelty, exploring contingencies,
link |
keeping the stakes relatively low, et cetera, et cetera.
link |
But these really are the gates to this holy grail
link |
that we call neuroplasticity.
link |
Neuroplasticity, as I've talked about in the podcast before,
link |
is a two-step process.
link |
It involves focusing very intensely
link |
or at least focusing somewhat on whatever it is
link |
that one is trying to learn,
link |
and then engaging in deep rest,
link |
ideally deep sleep, in the following nights.
link |
And I've also talked about the benefits
link |
of things like naps and yoga nidra,
link |
so-called NSDR, non-sleep deep rest,
link |
for enhancing or accelerating plasticity.
link |
You can check out the episodes on focus
link |
at hubermanlab.com or the episodes on how to learn faster,
link |
the detail, all of those.
link |
We had a newsletter that lists out all the tools
link |
for neuroplasticity, enhancing neuroplasticity.
link |
All that is available, zero cost to you
link |
at hubermanlab.com, et cetera.
link |
You can just download that information.
link |
But John's book, that newsletter, those episodes,
link |
they really point to this two-step process
link |
where it's focus and then rest, focus and then rest.
link |
And play is its own unique form of focused and then rest,
link |
It's not the same as learning something for sake of school
link |
or critically trying to learn a motor behavior
link |
for sake of sport.
link |
It's really about expanding the number of things
link |
that you could learn down the line, okay?
link |
So said once again,
link |
so I just want to make sure it's abundantly clear,
link |
play is about establishing a broader framework
link |
within which you can learn new things.
link |
It's not about learning some specific thing.
link |
It's not about the game you happen to be playing.
link |
It's not about the dollhouse that the kids are playing with
link |
so that they could become amazing dollhouse players
link |
when they grow up, right?
link |
The dirt-clawed war that I referred to earlier,
link |
for better or for worse,
link |
was not about becoming the best dirt-clawed thrower
link |
or winning the trophy for dirt-clods in the neighborhood,
link |
although we actually had a trophy
link |
for the best dirt-clawed team.
link |
Alas, it was not my team that year.
link |
But the point is that you're learning rules
link |
and establishing a broader foundation of practices
link |
that then you can learn more things within that context.
link |
Thus far, I've tried to convince you
link |
through a combination of data and anecdote and explanation
link |
that adopting a stance of playfulness
link |
and indeed engaging in play on a somewhat regular basis
link |
could be beneficial to you,
link |
regardless of circumstances or goals.
link |
If I haven't done that already,
link |
what I'm about to tell you hopefully
link |
will push you over the line.
link |
It turns out that when you look across
link |
the kingdom of all animals,
link |
what you find is that animals
link |
that engage in playful behaviors
link |
for the longest period of time
link |
are also the animals
link |
that have the greatest degree of neuroplasticity,
link |
the brain and nervous system's ability to change
link |
in response to experience.
link |
Put differently, animals that only play
link |
for a very small fraction of their entire life
link |
have very rigid brains that don't learn new things,
link |
whereas animals that play for a long period
link |
throughout their life have very plastic brains.
link |
And there's even some evidence that's at this point
link |
largely anecdotal, but there's some data starting to emerge
link |
that adults that maintain a playful stance
link |
that engage in things, again, that are low stakes,
link |
contingency exploring, important enough that people focus
link |
and that people pay attention to what they're doing,
link |
but that they are not filled with adrenaline,
link |
freaked out about the outcome being A or B,
link |
they're not super, super competitive,
link |
maybe just a little bit competitive
link |
or not competitive at all.
link |
That allows for more ongoing plasticity.
link |
And one of the people that comes to mind
link |
in thinking about this is, of course, the physicist,
link |
and I should say the great physicist, Richard Feynman,
link |
Nobel Prize winner, professor at Caltech,
link |
was involved in the Manhattan Project,
link |
but was also known for being a lifelong tinkerer, right?
link |
He also was a mischievous tinkerer.
link |
If you read any of the books about Feynman or by Feynman,
link |
surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman,
link |
or what do you care what other people think?
link |
These are wonderful short stories,
link |
mostly about Feynman doing things like picking all the locks
link |
at the Los Alamos laboratory
link |
and putting all the top secret documents
link |
out on the floor of the office
link |
so that when people came in in the morning,
link |
they were all out there.
link |
Obviously, they weren't released to the general public.
link |
He didn't want to threaten national security.
link |
But playing pranks like that, and actually Caltech,
link |
I don't know if this is still the case,
link |
but Caltech, where he was employed,
link |
was always known for doing
link |
very technologically challenging pranks.
link |
They're not known for their athletic prowess at Caltech.
link |
But they were known, for example,
link |
disrupting the scoreboard at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena,
link |
for instance, and things of that sort
link |
through technological feats that at least at the time
link |
required a lot of playfulness and technological prowess.
link |
So if you look in science or you look in art
link |
or you look in medicine or you look in any domain,
link |
what you find is the people that continue
link |
to evolve new practices
link |
tend to be people that were tinkerers,
link |
people that are very creative,
link |
tend to be people that are unafraid
link |
of exploring things in this low stakes way.
link |
They're not so rigidly attached to the outcome
link |
that they have to do everything perfectly all the time.
link |
Now, they might cloak these playful behaviors
link |
so that their final works always look perfect
link |
or always look incredible,
link |
but they have this kind of playful nature about them.
link |
I would venture even to say that the street artist Banksy,
link |
for instance, obviously an incredible artist
link |
puts a ton of thought and preparation
link |
but there's a kind of playfulness to the whole thing too
link |
of using two-dimensional paintings
link |
in concert with three-dimensional city dwellings
link |
in ways that I think that most people hadn't previously.
link |
There were other people like Christo
link |
and artists of that sort that did that.
link |
But I think Banksy is kind of recognized
link |
as the modern rendition of that kind of playfulness
link |
using cities in ways that most people don't use cities,
link |
using art in ways that most people don't use art,
link |
So to go back to the example of Feynman,
link |
Feynman was somebody who learned to paint and draw
link |
quite well into his 60s.
link |
He was somewhat famous or infamous, I should say,
link |
for bongo drumming on the roof of Caltech.
link |
I say infamous because he was known also
link |
for doing that naked,
link |
something that is certainly not in concert
link |
with the ethical standards and behaviors
link |
of universities today.
link |
But Feynman had this playful spirit as a child.
link |
He had that playful spirit as a teenager,
link |
and he had that playful spirit as an adult.
link |
And that's one of the hallmarks of Feynman
link |
was that he wasn't just a rigid physicist
link |
who could explain things clearly to the general public.
link |
He always carried through this playful spirit.
link |
And in some of his writings,
link |
he pointed to the fact that that playful spirit
link |
was something that he worked very hard
link |
to continue to cultivate in himself
link |
because it was the way in which
link |
he could see the world differently
link |
and to indeed make great discoveries
link |
in the field of physics,
link |
but also to kind of evolve his relationship
link |
to life more generally.
link |
And so he comes to mind as a prominent example
link |
of somebody who did this.
link |
And if I could achieve anything with this episode,
link |
besides teaching you something about the biology of play
link |
would be to teach you about the utility of play.
link |
Again, I don't consider myself
link |
a particularly playful person by nature,
link |
but I've tried over the years to adopt
link |
this stance of exploring things
link |
that are very focused on contingencies of different kinds,
link |
but keep the stakes low enough that I can have some fun
link |
And I like to think that it's benefited me somewhat.
link |
Now I'd like to drill a little bit further
link |
into this thing that we call neuroplasticity.
link |
Again, neuroplasticity is the brain and nervous systems
link |
ability to change in response to experience.
link |
And I should just say that throughout the entire lifespan,
link |
the nervous system can change very quickly
link |
in response to negative experiences.
link |
We can almost all engage in what's called
link |
one trial learning where if something really terrible
link |
or traumatic happens to us,
link |
our nervous system will rewire almost immediately,
link |
at least within a few days,
link |
such that we tend to want to avoid the experience
link |
that led to that trauma.
link |
Now the whole business of why people return to things
link |
that are traumatic to them is a whole other issue.
link |
There are books about things like trauma bonding.
link |
There's the so-called repetition compulsion
link |
from psychoanalysis that people go back into trauma
link |
to retest and gain new opportunities to overcome the trauma,
link |
et cetera, et cetera.
link |
But in general, what I'm referring to here is,
link |
you know, you have a bad experience at the swimming pool
link |
when you're a kid where someone holds your head
link |
under water too long,
link |
and then you just don't want to get back in the water.
link |
That's one trial learning of sorts.
link |
That of course can be overcome
link |
through proper exposure therapy
link |
or someone that you trust taking you there,
link |
or any number of behaviors that allow you to overcome
link |
that particular scenario and experience something new
link |
in that same context.
link |
But across the lifespan, the learning of new things,
link |
new contingencies, new possibilities,
link |
occurs very differently from about age zero
link |
when we're born until about age 25 and thereafter.
link |
So from about, I want to emphasize approximately
link |
age 25 onward, neuroplasticity occurs through the process
link |
that is exactly as I described before.
link |
Focus, rest, focus, rest.
link |
We focus very intensely.
link |
We can't do the thing.
link |
We can't do the new movement.
link |
We can't do the golf swing.
link |
We can't learn the math.
link |
We try, we try, we try, we try.
link |
We sleep a few nights and then all of a sudden we can do it.
link |
Because the rewiring actually occurs during deep rest
link |
or naps, but mostly during deep sleep.
link |
From birth till about age 25, however,
link |
we can learn things, new things and new contingencies,
link |
not just negative things and traumatic things
link |
through somewhat passive exposure to those things.
link |
I will never forget the first time
link |
that we went on a family trip to Washington DC
link |
and we went to the Smithsonian.
link |
I got to see the old fighter planes.
link |
And I think, I think the Kitty Hawk
link |
or the first one of the first planes was there.
link |
Anyway, obviously my recollection isn't terrific.
link |
My hippocampus is flailing on that one,
link |
but I'll never forget the trip.
link |
And I'll never forget who went.
link |
And I think it was probably eight or nine years old.
link |
It's embedded somewhere in my memory.
link |
And so just through passive experience
link |
and my focusing on the things that excited me
link |
about that trip, I have a recollection of that experience.
link |
I didn't have to deliberately focus.
link |
I wasn't telling myself, focus,
link |
you're going to need to remember this trip someday,
link |
Andrew, you're going to be podcasting about this,
link |
you know, in 39 years or whenever.
link |
Again, I forget exactly how old I was.
link |
But the key feature here is that the developing brain
link |
is able to learn through passive experience
link |
because the neurons, the nerve cells in the developing brain
link |
are much more over-connected
link |
than they will be later in life.
link |
The way to think about this is sort of,
link |
if you use Google maps as I do too often,
link |
I think when I drive,
link |
there are a number of roads and pathways
link |
that would get you from point A to point B.
link |
We could imagine those as neural circuits,
link |
or we can imagine neural circuits as those roads.
link |
Early in development,
link |
the nerve connections are much more extensive.
link |
It's like having a Google maps
link |
that where everything is connected to everything
link |
through tiny little cross streets.
link |
And the whole thing is just a complete mess.
link |
But then by taking particular routes of behavior,
link |
of thought, of emotion,
link |
certain routes become well-established
link |
and the other routes that are not taken simply disappear.
link |
Now in the biological context, in the brain,
link |
we call that process pruning.
link |
And the simple way to envision this is early in development,
link |
you have many, many more neurons
link |
than you will have as an adult.
link |
Those neurons are extensively interconnected
link |
and approximately 40% of those interconnections
link |
will disappear by time you're 25 years old.
link |
They are actively removed through processes
link |
that involve things like glial cells that come in
link |
and literally sneak their little processes
link |
in between neurons at the synapse,
link |
which are the points of contact
link |
and communication between neurons,
link |
and push those apart, even eat neurons.
link |
There's some incredible work from, for instance,
link |
Beth Stevens' lab at Harvard Medical School
link |
showing that glial cells go in and eat synapses
link |
that are not functional for that particular circuit.
link |
Now, what this tells us
link |
is that much of our learning during development
link |
is the removal of incorrect connections,
link |
but it also involves the strengthening of connections
link |
that are going to serve certain emotions, certain functions,
link |
motor functions, cognitive functions, et cetera.
link |
The process of play is largely a process
link |
of engaging pruning of neural connections
link |
and strengthening of the remaining connections.
link |
I'm sure that many of you have heard the term
link |
fire together, wire together.
link |
That phrase is often incorrectly attributed
link |
to the great Donald Hebb, who indeed was great,
link |
did incredible work, a psychologist from Canada
link |
who established a lot of the basic cellular learning rules
link |
for learning and memory,
link |
but it was the also great Dr. Carla Schatz
link |
who is now at Stanford
link |
and was at Berkeley and Harvard as well,
link |
but who is at Stanford Medical School
link |
who coined this term fire together, wire together.
link |
Indeed, that's what happens.
link |
When children play, when adolescents play,
link |
and when young adults play,
link |
whether or not it's social play or play with an object,
link |
whether or not it's a sport or play of any kind,
link |
imaginary play, imaginary friend play,
link |
there is a strengthening of certain neural connections
link |
and a pruning away of up to 40%,
link |
perhaps even more of connections
link |
that are not necessary for certain types of behaviors,
link |
emotions, and thoughts.
link |
What this means is that it is through the process of play
link |
that we become who we are as adults.
link |
And as I mentioned earlier,
link |
it is through the process of play
link |
that we are able to adjust who we are as adults.
link |
Now, there are bounds on this process.
link |
there's never been a reported case of an individual
link |
who had a hyperplastic or a brain
link |
that was as plastic in adulthood as it was in childhood.
link |
But what this tells us is that what we do
link |
in the process of play as children
link |
is really how we set up the rules
link |
for how we behave as adults in almost all domains,
link |
which is really incredible.
link |
And of course, the reassuring thing is that
link |
playing as an adult will allow you to expand
link |
on those neural circuits.
link |
You can literally grow new connections.
link |
Some of you may be saying, does it create new neurons?
link |
For better or for worse,
link |
it does not seem that many new neurons
link |
are added to your brain in adulthood.
link |
There are some papers that report a few neurons
link |
in certain brain areas, isolated brain areas,
link |
most of the rewiring of neural connections
link |
is the removal of certain connections,
link |
this process we're calling pruning,
link |
and the strengthening of the remaining connections
link |
that make those kind of Google Maps roads
link |
in the analogy I laid out before,
link |
thicker and more robust.
link |
Think of that as taking little trails
link |
and turning them into roads, then paving those roads,
link |
then turning those roads into highways,
link |
then putting up more lanes on those highways
link |
and eliminating all the small little back country roads
link |
that one could take.
link |
And again, this is an analogy for what is happening
link |
at the level of neural circuitry.
link |
Now, one of the key findings
link |
that has emerged from the literature
link |
is that children that have been subjected to trauma
link |
or immense amounts of stress of any kind
link |
have a harder time both engaging in play,
link |
but also a harder time accessing neuroplasticity
link |
The good news is this is not a permanent effect.
link |
And we'll talk about some of the ways to overcome that
link |
in a moment, but this should make sense to you
link |
because earlier we talked about how
link |
a high level of adrenaline, epinephrine
link |
in the brain and body actually inhibits,
link |
blocks the circuits in the brain and body
link |
that generate play behavior.
link |
And when I say that, I mean that in a very concrete way
link |
that epinephrine and adrenaline
link |
can actually suppress the sorts of circuitry
link |
that can lead to things like soft eyes or tongue out
link |
or the head tilt, or what we called partial postures
link |
of being able to engage in a rough and tumble play,
link |
but not take that to the point of outright aggression
link |
and damaging the other person or them damaging you.
link |
So when I say that trauma and stress
link |
can inhibit neuroplasticity by way of inhibiting play
link |
at a deeper neurobiological level,
link |
what I'm really saying is that the high levels
link |
of adrenaline that are generated from trauma and stress
link |
actually shut down the circuits that allow a child
link |
or a young adult to enter the game of play
link |
or engage in the game of play in the same way
link |
that a child or young adult who didn't have high levels
link |
of adrenaline in their system could possibly engage in.
link |
Now, the good news is that many
link |
of the existing trauma therapies that are out there now,
link |
including things like EMDR, exposure therapy,
link |
cognitive behavioral therapy, and on and on,
link |
including some of the therapies that are more neurochemical,
link |
things like ketamine or are more engineering-based,
link |
things like transcranial magnetic stimulation, for instance,
link |
many of those are paired with forms of talk therapy
link |
that are really about the same thing that play is about,
link |
which is exploring different contingencies.
link |
It's about exploring different types
link |
of emotional experiences as they relate
link |
to the same sort of scenario that created the trauma.
link |
And we did an entire episode on fear and trauma,
link |
and I recommend you check out that episode.
link |
It's easy to find, again, at hubermanlab.com.
link |
It's on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, et cetera, et cetera.
link |
Very easy to find.
link |
And there, I talk all about trauma treatments
link |
and the various kinds of trauma treatments
link |
that are out there, their efficacy in different scenarios
link |
and traumas and so on.
link |
But the point I'd like to make now is that the reason
link |
why children who experience a lot of trauma and stress
link |
have limited plasticity later on
link |
is because of the neurochemical substrates
link |
that are created from trauma and stress,
link |
because after all, stress is epinephrine
link |
and epinephrine is stress.
link |
Those are inseparable.
link |
And the way in which it more or less shuts down
link |
or at least inhibits, suppresses those play circuits.
link |
And again, the reassuring thing is that by engaging in play
link |
as adults, we can reactivate some of those circuits
link |
and reopen the plasticity.
link |
In fact, one very prominent trauma treatment now,
link |
especially for people that have been subjected
link |
to very severe traumas in the ongoing sense,
link |
meaning traumas that went on for many, many years,
link |
is to get them to engage in play, in things like dance,
link |
in basically getting them to engage their bodily movements
link |
in ways that they would otherwise
link |
not feel comfortable to engage in.
link |
And I find this area so interesting
link |
because on the face of it, you could say,
link |
oh, that's kind of, is that really biomedical treatment?
link |
You're taking people who are traumatized
link |
and having them dance.
link |
I mean, it seems kind of silly on the one hand,
link |
depending on your particular orientation.
link |
But on the other hand, it's actually quite profound
link |
and quite grounded in the mechanisms
link |
by which the brain circuits change.
link |
So again, back to this original principle,
link |
which is that play isn't just one portal to plasticity,
link |
play is the fundamental portal to plasticity.
link |
And that play and dance and exploration of novel movements,
link |
exploration of novel athletic movements are the route
link |
by which we access new ways of thinking, new contingencies.
link |
And I find it wonderful that the trauma release
link |
and the psychiatric and psychology community
link |
are exploring things like play and dance
link |
and other forms of reopening these circuits
link |
because indeed we would all love for there to be
link |
a magic pill by which trauma could be erased
link |
and new memories could be laid down
link |
or a device that could do that.
link |
But frankly, if you ask me or a number of my colleagues
link |
whether or not that's likely to happen anytime soon
link |
in an effective way,
link |
I think the short answer is going to be no,
link |
that there are going to be chemicals
link |
and things that can augment and support that process,
link |
but that there's not going to be just a magic pill
link |
that will suddenly reverse trauma altogether,
link |
that it's always going to be a case
link |
whereby shifts in neurochemical states
link |
are going to have to be combined
link |
with new ways of thinking and new behaviors.
link |
And I find it wonderful and reassuring
link |
that people are looking at play and play behavior
link |
as a not just one tiny shard of possibility there,
link |
but that it might actually be the main driver
link |
and a highly productive lever by which
link |
to rewire the traumatized brain.
link |
So if you're like me, you might be thinking,
link |
okay, I'm willing to be more playful.
link |
I'm willing to explore play as a portal to plasticity
link |
and that all makes good sense, but what should I play?
link |
Well, we've already established
link |
that you want to keep your adrenaline low.
link |
You have to keep the stakes low enough
link |
that you're not going to get totally consumed
link |
Now, for some people who are highly competitive,
link |
that's going to be challenging.
link |
And yet I don't want to make it seem
link |
as if you can't be competitive during play.
link |
There are many forms of competitive play
link |
that because you are a competitive person,
link |
allow you to derive great joy from that competitive play.
link |
I have a friend who's particularly good at horseshoes.
link |
I'm not particularly good at horseshoes,
link |
but whenever we play horseshoes,
link |
I can tell he's out there to crush me on horseshoes.
link |
And it's just one of these things where I can tell
link |
he derives great pleasure from crushing me
link |
at a game of horseshoes.
link |
I can't say because I haven't actually done the microdialysis
link |
which is a way of extracting chemistry
link |
from the brain in real time,
link |
nor have I recorded from his brain or imaged it in a scanner
link |
whether or not he has high levels of epinephrine
link |
or low levels of epinephrine during those games of horseshoes
link |
I suspect is low levels of epinephrine
link |
and high levels of dopamine, especially when he wins.
link |
And yes, he wins every time.
link |
But the point is that you can be competitive during play
link |
provided that you were enjoying yourself, okay?
link |
You can be competitive
link |
provided that you were enjoying yourself.
link |
There are particular forms of play
link |
that lend themselves best to neuroplasticity.
link |
And those particular forms of play, again,
link |
are not designed to necessarily just engage the plasticity
link |
that allows you to perform that behavior,
link |
but rather to expand the number of possibilities
link |
for your brain to change in general throughout life.
link |
And the two major forms of those
link |
for which there's good peer-reviewed research
link |
is to engage in novel forms of movement,
link |
including different speeds of movement.
link |
So let's say, for instance, you're somebody who runs.
link |
I happen to like running.
link |
I try and run three times a week.
link |
And generally when I run, I run forward.
link |
I don't run backward, although recently,
link |
because I've become very excited
link |
about the work of so-called knees over toes guy.
link |
His name is Ben Parker,
link |
but he goes by knees over toes guy on Instagram.
link |
I've never met him,
link |
but we've exchanged a few messages back and forth.
link |
And some of his practices involve walking backwards
link |
or doing sled pulls backwards.
link |
I found these to be very beneficial for my back
link |
and for my anterior tibialis
link |
and some things that have really helped
link |
with my posture and so forth.
link |
But in general, when I run, I run forward.
link |
I don't tend to run backward that much.
link |
And I might do that for a few minutes at the end,
link |
but not so much throughout the entire run.
link |
Running doesn't lend itself to a lot of novel forms
link |
of movement, lateral movements.
link |
So for you nerds out there,
link |
the movement in the sagittal plane or angled movements,
link |
but it does appear that things like dance or sports,
link |
where you end up generating a lot of dynamic movements,
link |
where there's jumping,
link |
where there's movement at different angles,
link |
where there's ducking, where there's leaping,
link |
that basically involve a lot of dynamic movement
link |
and aren't just strictly linear.
link |
Those seem to open the portals for plasticity.
link |
And that's because they mimic a lot of the brain circuitry
link |
that is associated with play.
link |
And the reason for that is the way
link |
in which those dynamic movements
link |
and movements of different speeds
link |
engage the vestibular system, the balance system.
link |
The vestibular system is in the inner ear,
link |
relates to the cerebellum, which translate to mini brain.
link |
You got a little mini brain in the back of your brain.
link |
It brings together visual information in a very direct way.
link |
I talked a lot about this in the episode
link |
on how to learn faster.
link |
So if you want to go in depth on how vestibular
link |
and different types of motor movements can open plasticity,
link |
I talk a little bit more, I should say a lot more there,
link |
but suffice to say that engaging in play
link |
that has a lot of dynamic movement
link |
or movements of different speeds, things like dance,
link |
things like sports, like soccer,
link |
where you're moving in different dimensions,
link |
that tends to be very conducive
link |
to what we would call play-related circuitry,
link |
provided you don't take it too seriously.
link |
You don't get those high levels of epinephrine.
link |
Now, for those of you that are also interested
link |
in non-physical or non-athletic forms of play
link |
that can really expand plasticity,
link |
there's some very interesting research
link |
about the game of chess.
link |
I don't play the game of chess.
link |
I've played a few times.
link |
I confess I don't know how to move all the pieces,
link |
so I'm not going to try and describe that here,
link |
but I've always wanted to learn chess.
link |
And I think after reading some of the peer reviewed research
link |
about chess and play in neuroplasticity,
link |
now I understand why.
link |
There's a really nice paper that was published
link |
in the International Journal of Research
link |
and Education and Science in 2017.
link |
And the title of this paper is,
link |
is chess just a game or is it a mirror
link |
that reflects a child's inner world?
link |
That's a very intense title for a biologist like me.
link |
But this paper is so interesting
link |
because what it really points to is the fact
link |
that in a single game, chess,
link |
you have, at least as I understand, two players,
link |
and those two players are moving pieces on the chess board
link |
for which each piece can do different things, right?
link |
Can move in different ways under different scenarios,
link |
but there are different rules for different pieces.
link |
And so each player actually has to assume
link |
multiple identities during the same game.
link |
And each of those identities has different rules
link |
and ways of interacting.
link |
So in a way we can think of chess as one game,
link |
but actually chess is a kind of a substrate
link |
for exploring multiple roles for different characters.
link |
And this is quite a bit different than, for instance,
link |
video games where somebody has their favorite
link |
video game player or they have an avatar
link |
and they're always in the same role.
link |
It's also quite a bit different
link |
for when you engage in any kind of play
link |
where you are yourself.
link |
You're just being you in that game.
link |
And so now I'm highly incentivized to explore chess.
link |
You see quotes out there, for instance,
link |
things like chess is life or jujitsu is life.
link |
I always assumed that that meant
link |
that someone's entire life was chess
link |
or their entire life was jujitsu, for instance.
link |
But in reading over the research about chess in particular,
link |
but also certain forms of martial arts,
link |
also certain forms of dance,
link |
what one finds is that indeed those games are life
link |
in the sense that they involve adopting multiple roles
link |
and exploring contingencies in a number of different ways.
link |
So there are some games that allow you to explore
link |
a much vaster landscape of movements or of mental roles
link |
or of ways of engaging in strategic movement
link |
as is the case with chess.
link |
And so when you hear that activity blank is life,
link |
it often reflects the passion for that activity,
link |
but I think looked at differently,
link |
it also reflects the fact that that activity
link |
is a portal through which you can explore life
link |
through many, many different lenses.
link |
And I think that that's especially powerful
link |
in terms of thinking about how play can be leveraged
link |
So for those of you that are interested in leveraging play
link |
for neuroplasticity and expanding your mind, if you will,
link |
I highly recommend picking an activity
link |
that will allow you to adopt different roles
link |
within that activity, where it's not rigidly linear.
link |
This is actually a way in which I start to depart
link |
from this modern and important, but somewhat narrow idea
link |
that exercise is the only route to plasticity.
link |
I have Nobel prize-winning colleagues that swim
link |
for two miles a day and have done that for a long time.
link |
And they will tell you, I always think more clearly
link |
after my swimming and I certainly in my experience,
link |
after a good run or a good workout,
link |
my mind seems to work best,
link |
unless of course that workout was very, very intense.
link |
I've talked about this before.
link |
If you do work out very, very hard in whether or not
link |
it's aerobic or resistance training or sport of any kind,
link |
your brain won't function as well afterwards,
link |
mostly because of the diversion of oxygen
link |
to tissues away from your brain.
link |
You actually are getting less oxygen to your brain.
link |
But in general, most of us feel that if we exercise
link |
regularly, our brain functions better.
link |
But there are activities that extend beyond linear exercise,
link |
beyond just generating the same sets of movements
link |
over and over again, whether or not it's exercise or not.
link |
And that's really what play is.
link |
Play is about dynamically exploring
link |
different kinds of movements,
link |
dynamically exploring different kinds of thoughts,
link |
dynamically exploring different kinds of roles
link |
that one could adopt.
link |
And that is the way that the brain learns new things.
link |
So I encourage you to explore chess.
link |
I intend to learn chess this year.
link |
I'm very excited to do that.
link |
Now, if you already play chess
link |
and you are an expert chess player,
link |
you actually will derive less benefit
link |
in terms of this play-induced neuroplasticity
link |
than you would, for instance, if you went out and,
link |
I don't know, played a game of soccer
link |
or did something that was very novel for your nervous system
link |
because in that novelty and in that exploration
link |
of new behaviors and new ways of thinking,
link |
you are opening the portal to plasticity.
link |
Whereas in doing what you already know how to do
link |
and trying just to perform better and better at it,
link |
you will get better at chess.
link |
But again, that's just chess.
link |
You are not expanding the realms
link |
in which you can become more plastic,
link |
that you are able to learn new things in relationship,
link |
in life, in finance, in friendship, et cetera.
link |
In researching this episode,
link |
one of the most interesting areas I discovered
link |
was this notion of personal play identity.
link |
Personal play identity is a term that,
link |
at least to my knowledge,
link |
was coined by a Turkish researcher by the name,
link |
and forgive me, I'm going to mispronounce this,
link |
is Gokhan Gunes, G-O-K-H-A-N,
link |
last name, G-U-N-E-S, and forgive me, Gokhan.
link |
And if we have any Turkish-speaking members of the audience,
link |
please put the correction in the comment section on YouTube.
link |
Make it phonetic so I can understand what it is.
link |
Please, I'd love to correct it.
link |
And apologies, or who knows?
link |
If I got it right, then it was pure luck.
link |
Gokhan Gunes has coined this term personal play identity.
link |
And the key role that personal play identity establishes
link |
in who we see ourselves as being,
link |
and not just in the context of play.
link |
Personal play identity has four well-defined dimensions.
link |
And I should say that if you're interested
link |
in learning more about this,
link |
the paper that I found particularly informative
link |
is published in Current Psychology,
link |
and the title is Personal Play Identity
link |
and the Fundamental Elements in its Developmental Process.
link |
And the author, of course, is Gokhan Gunes,
link |
G-U-N-E-S, last name.
link |
This is from 2021.
link |
There are four components to personal play identity.
link |
How you play, your personality,
link |
socioculture and environment.
link |
So that's the third one that's together,
link |
socioculture and environment, and economics and technology.
link |
Now that sounds somewhat complex,
link |
and this paper is somewhat complex,
link |
but basically what it says is that we bring together
link |
certain aspects of ourselves
link |
and how we react to different play scenarios
link |
when we're younger.
link |
And we bring that forward into the world
link |
in all contexts as adults.
link |
To illustrate this, I'm going to ask you a question.
link |
When you were a child, let's say 10 years old,
link |
would you have considered yourself competitive?
link |
Would you have considered yourself
link |
somebody who's cooperative and realize, of course,
link |
that those are not mutually exclusive?
link |
You could be competitive and cooperative.
link |
Would you consider yourself somebody
link |
that preferred to play alone
link |
or preferred to play with one or two close friends?
link |
Or were you somebody that really enjoyed
link |
playing in large groups?
link |
Were you somebody that enjoyed playing the leader
link |
in one moment and was equally okay
link |
with being a follower at a later moment?
link |
Were you okay with having your role switched
link |
midway through a game?
link |
Where do you get upset or be delighted
link |
or not care at all about having to switch teams
link |
during the middle of the game
link |
because your team was winning to even things out?
link |
You can imagine how that would play out internally.
link |
You would immediately register
link |
that you must be a valuable player
link |
because you're being moved off the winning team
link |
toward the losing team.
link |
But then again, you're now being forced
link |
to join the losing team.
link |
How did you feel about that?
link |
Were you somebody that was comfortable
link |
with other people breaking rules
link |
or perhaps even yourself breaking rules or bending rules?
link |
Kind of be able to find term.
link |
Or were you somebody that really needed
link |
to know all the rules
link |
and if everyone didn't rigidly adhere to those rules
link |
was quite disturbed by that?
link |
The number of questions goes on and on and on.
link |
And I will provide a link to a paper
link |
that asks a number of questions
link |
that helps you arrive at a sort of score of sorts
link |
or an index of what Gunes and others
link |
have referred to as personal play identity.
link |
The point is that if we look back to our early adolescence,
link |
somewhere between 10 and 14 years old,
link |
a peak time for social development,
link |
a peak time for play of various kinds,
link |
a peak time for motor development,
link |
a peak time of psychosocial development
link |
where we learn where we fit into hierarchies
link |
as we relate to members of the same sex,
link |
of the opposite sex, et cetera,
link |
we can start to get a portal into how and why
link |
we show up to various activities in work
link |
and relationship, et cetera, as adults.
link |
In fact, I'll venture to say that if we go into that process
link |
for ourselves for five or 10 minutes,
link |
you start to see some remarkable parallels
link |
between the way you were at that stage
link |
and your tendencies and your preferences as adults.
link |
We tend to look at our early childhood experiences
link |
and our families, and to some degree,
link |
our friends in terms of how we become who we become.
link |
I've talked about the incredible work of Alan Shore
link |
on previous episodes of the podcast.
link |
Alan Shore is a psychiatrist and has done extensive work
link |
on how parent-child interactions,
link |
in particular baby and mother,
link |
but also baby and father, shape the brain
link |
and the brain and emotional systems ability
link |
to go from states of elation and excitement,
link |
the so-called dopamine epinephrine type circuitry,
link |
to the more warm, soothing types of calm interactions
link |
that in broad terms could be described as more serotonin,
link |
oxytocin, and things of that sort.
link |
That work really points to the key roles
link |
that the caregiver and the child, you,
link |
engaged in in early life.
link |
And that is incredible work.
link |
I do hope to host Dr. Shore on the podcast
link |
at some point in the not too distant future.
link |
But equally important, of course,
link |
are the interactions that we export
link |
from that early laying down of biological circuitry
link |
and psychological circuitry
link |
to the way we play by ourselves
link |
and the way we play with others,
link |
in small numbers or in great numbers.
link |
And of course it would be the case
link |
that how we played as a 10 or 12-year-old
link |
would impact how we behave as a 16-year-old
link |
and as a 20-year-old and as a 30-year-old
link |
and so on and so on.
link |
One of my favorite things about developmental biology
link |
and developmental psychology
link |
is that it is grounded in the fact
link |
that we don't just have a childhood and an adulthood.
link |
There isn't just our child self and our adult self.
link |
And even though there are transitions around the mechanisms
link |
that underlie neuroplasticity at approximately age 25,
link |
it is simply the case that development
link |
is our entire lifespan,
link |
that our lifespan is one long developmental arc.
link |
How long depends on our genetics, our lifestyle,
link |
accidents, injury, and disease, of course,
link |
but it is one long developmental arc.
link |
And so it shouldn't surprise us at all
link |
that how we learn to play as a 10-year-old or 12-year-old
link |
would impact how we play and interact with people
link |
as a teenager and a young adult and on and on and on.
link |
And that play is the place in which we explore
link |
and which we learn.
link |
Play is the substrate by which our nervous system changes us
link |
from this hyper-connected batch of neurons
link |
where everything is connected to everything, more or less,
link |
to a brain and nervous system
link |
whereby certain circuits work with immense proficiency
link |
and others are less accessible to us.
link |
But again, the wonderful thing about the human nervous system
link |
is that because it is plastic for the entire lifespan
link |
and because these two elements of focus and rest
link |
can be deployed again and again and again,
link |
just because neural circuits didn't form
link |
does not mean that they can't form later in life.
link |
And today we've been focusing on how play itself,
link |
the same substrate that we use during development
link |
to become who we are,
link |
is the portal by which we can change who we are
link |
So I hope I've convinced you that play
link |
is an extremely important fundamental
link |
homeostatically regulated aspect of our nervous system,
link |
which is just a mouthful of nerd speak to say,
link |
play can change your brain for the better.
link |
And that is true for every stage of life.
link |
The recommendation that I make,
link |
and certainly the one that I'm going to direct it myself
link |
as well, is to try and engage in at least one hour
link |
of pure play per week.
link |
Now, I came to that recommendation
link |
because of the literature that says,
link |
well, you need to engage in something pretty repetitively.
link |
It should be novel.
link |
So this wouldn't be something
link |
that you are exceptionally good at already.
link |
If you insist on doing something
link |
that you're already exceptionally good at,
link |
then you want to really do some free form,
link |
low stakes tinkering.
link |
So make it safe, but make it free form.
link |
So really explore things with that.
link |
Some people call this beginner's mind,
link |
although I find that a little abstract.
link |
I like the notion of beginner's mind,
link |
but it's sort of like,
link |
how do you know if you're in beginner's mind?
link |
I think beginner's mind is sort of the expectation
link |
that you're not going to do it well yet,
link |
but play extends beyond beginner's mind.
link |
Play is really about not even worrying
link |
if you're going to get good at it
link |
or really proficient at it.
link |
It's really about exploring contingencies
link |
with truly low stakes.
link |
That's what will allow you to access
link |
these neurochemical combinations
link |
of elevated endogenous opioids, low epinephrine, et cetera,
link |
that will open up neuroplasticity.
link |
For those of you that need a little more guidance
link |
on how to play, there's a book out there.
link |
I actually learned about this from Tim Ferriss' blog.
link |
It's called Play It Away, A Workaholic's Cure for Anxiety.
link |
So that's more focused on anxiety.
link |
The author is Charlie Hone, last name H-O-E-H-N.
link |
We'll provide a link for it in the show notes and caption,
link |
Play It Away, A Workaholic's Cure for Anxiety.
link |
But books and other resources aside,
link |
I think one hour of play per week
link |
is a reasonable amount of time
link |
to engage in dedicated play behavior
link |
for the purpose of opening up these neural circuits
link |
The key feature, of course,
link |
is to not have immense proficiency in that given activity,
link |
or at least not the way you perform it.
link |
And if you do gain proficiency in that activity,
link |
well, then it becomes something else.
link |
It's no longer about play, it's about performance.
link |
you would then want to adopt a new play behavior.
link |
You'll notice that I largely avoided
link |
using the word fun throughout this episode.
link |
Fun is a somewhat abstract term,
link |
and like many emotions and many verbal descriptions
link |
of experience, it falls short
link |
in the context of a neurobiological discussion about play.
link |
If you have fun, terrific.
link |
Some people might find, however,
link |
that engaging in play is kind of uncomfortable.
link |
Well, there your goal then
link |
should be to lower your level of discomfort
link |
by focusing less on the outcomes
link |
and just simply engaging in the behavior
link |
because, well, I'm telling you that it's good for you,
link |
but hopefully you will tell yourself that it's good for you
link |
and that you will experience that it's good for you.
link |
The literature certainly points to that,
link |
and the literature certainly points to the fact
link |
that play is the way that we are built.
link |
We are built to play.
link |
We have brain circuits from back to front
link |
and within our body that are there for play,
link |
and they don't disappear.
link |
They do not get pruned away
link |
as we go from development to adulthood.
link |
So if ever you needed a neurobiological explanation
link |
for why play is important throughout the lifespan,
link |
It's that biology does not waste resources.
link |
It's extremely efficient.
link |
And were the circuits for play
link |
not to be important in adulthood,
link |
they would have been pruned away,
link |
but I guarantee you they are there
link |
in your brain and nervous system now.
link |
They will be there tomorrow,
link |
and they will be there going forward.
link |
So my suggestion is that you use them one hour per week.
link |
If you're learning from and are enjoying this podcast,
link |
please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
link |
That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.
link |
In addition, please subscribe to the podcast
link |
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link |
And on Apple, you have the opportunity
link |
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link |
Please leave us comments and suggestions and feedback,
link |
including suggestions for future podcast guests
link |
in the comment section on YouTube.
link |
We do read all those comments.
link |
Please also check out the sponsors mentioned
link |
at the beginning of the episode.
link |
That's the best way to support this podcast.
link |
We also have a Patreon.
link |
It's patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman.
link |
And there you can support the podcast
link |
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link |
If you're not already following us on Twitter and Instagram,
link |
we are Huberman Lab on Twitter
link |
and also Huberman Lab on Instagram.
link |
On Instagram, I do short posts that are related
link |
to topics covered on the podcast,
link |
but also some additional topics.
link |
So these would include science-based tools
link |
for things like focus, for sleep, for learning,
link |
and many other topics as well.
link |
In previous episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast,
link |
we often refer to supplements.
link |
Now supplements aren't necessary or correct for everybody,
link |
but many people derive tremendous benefit from them
link |
for things like sleep and focus and so on.
link |
We've partnered with Thorne, that's T-H-O-R-I-N-E,
link |
because Thorne supplements are of the very highest quality
link |
in terms of the ingredients they use
link |
and the specificity of the amounts of the ingredients
link |
that are listed on the bottle
link |
are actually what is in those bottles,
link |
which is not the case for many supplement brands out there.
link |
If you're interested in seeing the supplements that I take,
link |
you can go to thorne.com slash the letter U slash Huberman.
link |
So that's T-H-O-R-N-E.com slash the letter U slash Huberman.
link |
And those supplements you can purchase at 20% off.
link |
And if you navigate deeper into the Thorne site
link |
through that URL portal,
link |
you can also get 20% off any of the other supplements
link |
that Thorne makes.
link |
Thank you once again for joining me for this discussion
link |
about the incredible biology and psychology
link |
and power of this thing that we call play.
link |
And last, but certainly not least,
link |
thank you for your interest in science.
link |
I'll see you next time.