Category: Learning

Play and Culture

Two earlier posts on The Neurobiology of Play and Taking Play Seriously examined play as the neurobiological and behavioral levels.  Together, they present an argument for play as one primary way that animals with large brains achieve neurological integration through play’s role in skilled behavioral engagement and the building of social relationships. The last post ended by discussing the role of play in joint coordination and reciprocal fair play, and the first post by saying that play helps combine sensory information, emotional states, cognitive framing, bodily movement, and decision making. 

Today I want to argue that together, these processes help promote the production of culture.  Without the integration of basic neurological processing and social relationships into culture, culture is, in effect, an empty shell of forms and roles and symbols.  Play connects us into cultural forms, helps recreate them anew for developing individuals and even create new forms.  In other words, I see play as part of how we get cultural creole, which I discussed in an early post, Avatars and Cultural Creole, on the challenge persistent on-line communities present to anthropology’s theory of culture. 

But first a mini-ethnographic moment.  I went sledding with my kids the other day.  My eldest son’s best friend joined us, along with his older sister.  At first I was sledding with my little daughter as the boys zipped and at times tumbled down the hill on their own.  They started to create a game out of it, imagining they were space ships in battle.  Arguments began to break out over who beat whom and what type of ship each one could be.  A new game quickly evolved as I started to race down on my sled after them—suddenly I became the enemy, trying to torpedo them, hands outstretched as they tried to squirm away.  (To note, the combined rough-and-tumble/Space Wars held no interest for the older sister and was a bit too dangerous for my daughter, so they started hanging out and doing things together.  Play and gender…)  Then the game evolved more, as I went up the other side of the run-off pond where we sled.  First I was a dangerous battleship attacking them.  Tiring more quickly than they did, I finally simply lay there on the flat bottom of the pond and became a battlestar which they could ram with fierce joy. 
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Taking Play Seriously

When I lived in Nigeria, I used to cross the city of Calabar to visit the defunct zoo, taking food for the animals—a constrictor snake, some crocodiles, a male drill monkey—still trapped in cages.  Jacob, a large juvenile chimpanzee, lived in that zoo in a cage roughly ten feet by ten feet.  As I walked onto the zoo grounds, Jacob would greet me with an exuberant pant-hoot and I would respond back (my Intro to Anthro students are endlessly amused when I demonstrate my pant-hooting skills).  Though I carried food for him, what Jacob most wanted to do was play with me. 

Jacob loved to play tag first, swinging back and forth across the front of his thickly barred cage, sticking a hand out to see if I could catch it.  We would rush back and forth together, Jacob generally favoring the role of being chased.  Then we’d settle down for some tickling.  Believe me, being tickled by a chimpanzee is, I am sure, rather what my boys feel when I get overly excited about tickling them. 

Jacob’s fingers were powerful, and his arms more so, but I made myself laugh in the chortling sound of chimpanzees.  If he got too strong, I could simply let out a sound of pain and he’d stop.  Then we’d get started again, because of course I loved to tickle him back.  I remember times, our heads together, pressed against the bars, his hand at the back of my neck, my fingers digging into his ribs.  It was such fun, yet I never could quite shake the thought in that moment that he could crush my head so easily against the bars. 
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The Neurobiology of Play

Taking Play Seriously, by Robin Marantz Henig, appears today in the New York Times Magazine.  Henig draws on ethology, neuroscience, and developmental psychology to highlight advances in research on play.  Play strikes many of us as deeply essential, but what the heck is it for?  It’s not precisely clear. 

Today I’ll cover some of the interesting developments about the neurobiology of play mentioned in Taking Play Seriously.  So John Byers first.  Byers is a zoologist at the University of Idaho who noticed that the developmental trajectory of play looks like an inverted U across many species, increasing during the juvenile period and dropping off during puberty.  This pattern corresponded quite well with the growth curve of the cerebellum.  The article summarizes the implications: 

The synchrony suggested a few things to Byers: that play might be related to growth of the cerebellum, since they both peak at about the same time; that there is a sensitive period in brain growth, during which time it’s important for an animal to get the brain-growth stimulation of play; and that the cerebellum needs the whole-body movements of play to achieve its ultimate configuration.

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Mimicry and Persuasion

Greg, I had to put this up for you–mirroring others, salesmen, and the brain?  Couldn’t be a better combination, unless we also stick some no-holds-barred fighting or choke techniques in there when mimicked persuasion fails…

The NY Times has an article today, “You Remind Me of Me,” whose basic point comes to this: “subtle mimicry comes across as a form of flattery, the physical dance of charm itself.”  Subtle mimicry is not immediate and seemingly deliberate, but is a shadowing that happens a couple seconds later.  In one study, supposedly on a new sports drink “Vigor,” some study participants were subtly mimicked in the lab, legs crossed a couple seconds later, body position copied, and so forth.  The result: “None of the copied participants picked up on the mimicry. But by the end of the short interview, they were significantly more likely than the others to consume the new drink, to say they would buy it and to predict its success in the market. In a similar experiment, the psychologists found that this was especially true if the participants knew that the interviewer, the mimic, had a stake in the product’s success.”
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The Family Dinner Deconstructed

National Public Radio had a radio broadcast yesterday morning on “The Family Dinner Deconstructed.”  Here’s the blurb: “The ritual of a family dinner has been praised as an antidote to bad grades and bad habits in kids. But as researchers look closer at the family dinner, they raise the question: Is it the mere act of eating together that counts, or is it that strong families are already more likely to have a family dinner?” 

The reporter does a wonderful job talking with a variety of researcher to focus in on the proximate features of the family dinner—conversations, relationships, rituals, emotions—and how they can impact physical and mental health.  For example, the quality of conversations at mealtime was a better predictor of reading development than parents actually reading to their children.  But what mattered was the content on dinner conservation, that it was complex and “rich with explanation, story telling, and more.”  Similarly, for physical and mental development (for example, eating disorders), specific behaviors at dinner proved important: roles assigned (setting the table, beginning and end to dinner); a genuine concern about daily activities; and a sense of empathy and concern for each other. 

While the radio cast pushes a double-blind study to “determine” the specific effects of a good-quality family dinner versus dinner-as-usual, the announcer rightly acknowledges that doing such research is a daunting prospect.  I would add that an ethnographic approach that builds on this educational and psychological research and that teases out the relationships between dinner, family interaction, and development as a joint physical-mental phenomenon could also add some great insights.

Sleep, Eat, Sex – Orexin Has Something to Say

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchOrexin is a neuropeptide which is released by the posterior lateral hypothalamus, and is linked to wakefulness and sleep, appetite regulation, and the motivation of sexual and addictive behaviors.  One apt way to think about it is as a hormone in the brain, combining some of the popularly conceived effects of adrenaline and testosterone into one. 

(Don’t get too excited now!  I am just trying to give you a way to think about it, that orexin works to promote arousal and response…)

I am writing a post on the links of orexin to appetitive behavior, particularly addiction, but I’ve generated a lot of material.  So I am going to give you this one first, which summarizes aspects of orexin (also known as hypocretin) and neurological function with respect to sleep, appetite and sex. 
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