Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.

I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and

Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are going to talk about the biology,

psychology and utility of play.

Play is something that normally we associate with children's games and indeed with being a child.

Much of our childhood development centers around play, whether or not it's organized play or spontaneous play.

But as adults, we also need to play and today I'm going to talk about what I like to refer to as the power of play.

The power of play resides in plays ability to change our nervous system for the better so that we can perform many activities.

Not just play activities better.

Play can also function as a way to explore new ways of being in different scenarios, in work, in relationships,

in settings of all kinds and indeed also in the relationship to oneself.

In fact, we are going to explore how assuming different identities during the same game of play or the same forms of play

has been shown to be immensely powerful for allowing people to engage in more creative thinking and dynamic thinking

and indeed to become better leaders and more effective workers and students and learners and happier people.

I'm also going to cover some data that shows that learning to play properly can enhance one's ability to focus and is an active area of research for treatment of things like ADHD,

attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, just as a little sneak preview of where that's headed.

Children who do not access enough play during certain stages of childhood are more prone to develop ADHD.

The good news is all of us, regardless of whether or not we have ADHD or not, whether or not we have ample access to play during childhood or not,

can engage and grow the neural circuits that allow for this incredible power of play.

This can be done again at any stage of life today.

We're going to talk about the protocols, the science, we review all of that and I promise you'll come away with a lot of knowledge, whether or not you're a parent, whether or not you're a child, whether or not you're a person of any age, you're going to have tools and knowledge that will benefit you.

Before we begin, I want to share with you the results of what I think to be an extremely exciting and certainly an actionable study that was just published in the journal scientific reports.

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