By Sam Jones, Illustration: George Wylesol/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, September 14, 2023
Play during both childhood and adulthood is important for the healthy functioning of humans and other species, but why we play — the brain circuitry behind this behavior — is poorly understood.
A new study in Neuron has identified groups of cells in the rat brain that may provide clues to the brain structures and their connections that are essential for play.
Understanding the neurological basis of positive behaviors such as play “may assist in developing targeted interventions to help people, especially children, struggling with the absence or dysregulation of such states due to underlying medical conditions or environmental circumstances,” said Natalie Gloveli, a graduate student at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin and lead author of the study.
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