Football Games Competition - RC Deportivo de La Coruña 2022 - Borja Jiménez Sáez (Patreon)

- Play activates the brain’s reward circuitry but not negative stress responses, which can facilitate attention and action.

- Play is fun. The brain generates chemical signals that encode a key component of fun: reward, the quality that makes us come back for more. Reward is conveyed within the brain by dopamine, a neurotransmitter that has many functions depending on where and when it is secreted. Dopamine is made by cells in the brain’s core, in the substantia nigra and the ventral tegmental area.

- Play, exercise, and stress are closely linked. Play might be an indicator of health or resistance to stress.

- Play activates other brain signaling systems as well, including the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Its close relative epinephrine (also known as adrenaline) is released to the body as an initial component of stress-related signaling. As the main activator of the sympathetic nervous system, epinephrine mobilizes our energies for “fight, flight, fright, or fornication,” as the medical-school mnemonic goes. Norepinephrine is also involved in rousing us to attention and action, but by acting as a neurotransmitter. Norepinephrine facilitates learning mechanisms at synapses as well. In some neurons, norepinephrine improves brain plasticity, such that change becomes possible when this chemical is present in elevated amounts. The same is true for dopamine, which accounts for how reward leads to long-term changes to make us want more—neural plasticity mechanisms are strongly facilitated when reward occurs.

- On the whole, play is associated with responses that facilitate learning.

- The conditions of play—the generation of signals that enhance learning without an accompanying stress response—allow the brain to explore possibilities and to learn from them. Thus, a major function of play may well be to provide practice for real life. The use of a skill or other mental capacity builds up that ability.

- Total immersion in an activity often indicates that the activity is intensely enjoyable; this is the concept of flow, or what athletes call being in the zone. Flow occurs during active experiences that require concentration but are also highly practiced, where the goals and boundaries are clear but leave room for creativity.

Reference: Play, Stress, and the Learning Brain (Sam Wang & Sandra Aamodt)