Playing distracts us from many vital activities. Why did we evolve to love it?
Like breathing, sleeping and eating, playing is innate in humans. But unlike those other functions, which could easily mean the difference between a long life and an early death, the usefulness of play isn’t quite as obvious. Brains at Play investigates play through the work of Jaak Panksepp, professor of integrative psychology and neuroscience at Washington State University, who conducted pioneering research on play. By performing surgery on rats, Panksepp discovered that the instinct to play exists in the primitive part of the mammalian brain, and has surprisingly important implications for social development.
Producer: John Poole
Website: NPR Ed
videoHistory
In the face of denial, this film uncovers the hidden scars of Indonesia’s 1998 riots
21 minutes
videoSocial psychology
What happened when a crypto scam swept over a sleepy town in the Caucasus
18 minutes
videoVirtues and vices
Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity
5 minutes
videoBioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 minutes
videoChildhood and adolescence
The police camp where tween girls enter a sisterhood of law and order
28 minutes
videoNeuroscience
This intricate map of a fruit fly brain could signal a revolution in neuroscience
2 minutes
