Affective neuroscientist Dr. Jaak Panksepp mapped the brain's primary emotional systems and argued that vigorous physical play is not a luxury for young children: it is a primal brain function with its own dedicated circuitry.
Dr. Jaak Panksepp was an affective neuroscientist: a scientist of the emotional brain. Where much of neuroscience concentrated on thinking, memory and perception, Panksepp spent his career mapping the deeper, older machinery of feeling. His work identified a set of primary emotional systems wired into the subcortical brain, the ancient layers beneath the thinking cortex, and among them he described two that matter enormously to anyone raising a small child: a SEEKING system, which drives curiosity and exploration, and a dedicated PLAY system, which drives the urge to chase, wrestle, tumble and laugh.
He is perhaps best known for a discovery that sounds like a joke and is anything but: he found that rats laugh. During rough-and-tumble play, young rats produce a distinctive chirping that behaves, in every way Panksepp could measure, like laughter. It was a startling demonstration of his central point. Play is not a human cultural invention that children pick up by watching others. It is a primal function of the mammalian brain, shared across species, as fundamental as fear or hunger.
Panksepp's core claim is simple to state and quietly radical in its implications. Physical, vigorous play activates dedicated subcortical brain systems that all mammals share. The urge to play does not have to be taught, modelled or incentivised. It rises up from the oldest parts of the brain on its own, which is why a puppy, a lamb and a three-year-old all do recognisably the same thing: they chase, they pounce, they roll, they spring back up and demand another go. In Panksepp's framework, that boisterous energy is not noise around the edges of development. It is the brain exercising a system it was born with, and by exercising it, building the social brain on top of it.
In a 2007 paper for the Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Panksepp pushed the claim into territory that parents and clinicians still wrestle with. He proposed that abundant physical play in early childhood may help reduce ADHD-type symptoms, the impulsivity and restlessness that get so many young children, especially boys, into trouble at school. The reasoning runs in both directions: if vigorous play helps the developing brain learn to regulate its own impulses, then play deprivation, a childhood short on chase and tumble, may make those symptoms worse. He framed the question directly in the paper's title, asking whether play can diminish ADHD and facilitate the construction of the social brain.
The source
Panksepp (2007), Can PLAY Diminish ADHD and Facilitate the Construction of the Social Brain?, Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · Read the original
It is worth being clear about what kind of claim this is. Panksepp was proposing a hypothesis grounded in decades of animal research, not reporting a finished clinical trial in children. The existence of the PLAY circuit is solid neuroscience. The leap from rat play to ADHD symptoms in children is a carefully argued proposal, and Panksepp himself presented it as a question worth testing. But the direction of his argument is hard to dismiss: if the brain comes fitted with a system whose whole job is vigorous physical play, a childhood that starves that system is unlikely to be a neutral childhood.
For a parent of a toddler or preschooler, Panksepp's work reframes the most exhausting parts of the day. The child who cannot sit still after tea, who wants to be chased around the kitchen table for the ninth time, who hurls themselves at you the moment you kneel on the carpet, is not misbehaving. They are running a brain programme that is supposed to run, and supposed to run a lot, precisely at this age. The energy is the system working, not the system failing.
The practical implication is that vigorous play deserves a protected place in the routine, the way meals and sleep have one. Not as a treat after the important things, but as one of the important things. A child who has had a proper dose of running, chasing and rough-and-tumble is, on Panksepp's account, doing exactly the work that builds impulse control and social judgement: learning when to push and when to ease off, how hard is too hard, how to lose a chase and laugh about it. Those are not lessons a screen can teach, because a screen never pushes back, never squeals, never says "too rough" and never invites another round.
Honesty matters here. No one can promise that more garden chase will prevent or treat ADHD, and Panksepp never claimed it would. A parent worried about their child's attention or impulsivity should talk to a professional, not just buy a set of skittles. But the cost-benefit calculation for a young child is unusually kind: abundant physical play carries essentially no downside, sits squarely within what the brain evolved to expect, and may help with the very symptoms parents worry about most.
Panksepp's laboratory was full of chirping rats. Yours is the back garden on a Saturday morning, and it does not need much equipment, just an excuse. That is what a good garden game really is: a socially acceptable container for chase and tumble. A quoits set on the lawn becomes a relay the moment two children decide it is one. Skittles are knocked down with a level of full-body commitment no adult ever asked for, and then there is the scramble to set them up again, which is half the game. A bean bag toss turns into dodging. It always turns into dodging.
Watch a four-year-old play garden skittles and you can almost see Panksepp's circuit firing. The run-up that is far longer than it needs to be. The theatrical tumble after the throw. The shriek when the pins go down, which is the human version of the rat's chirp. The instant, urgent "again, again". None of this was taught. Nobody models the victory tumble. It comes from the same ancient system that makes lambs spring sideways in a field, and a garden full of traditional outdoor games gives it somewhere glorious to go.
Jaques London has been provisioning this kind of play since 1795, longer than any other games company on earth, and the firm that invented croquet in 1851 understood something Panksepp later proved: families do not gather around a screen to laugh until they ache, they gather around a game. The same principle holds when the weather drives everyone indoors. A box of classic family games keeps the social half of the PLAY system fed: the turn-taking, the mock outrage, the negotiation, the giggling collapse when the tower of pieces goes over. Chaos, an adult might call it. Brain food, Panksepp would say.
Panksepp's 2007 paper is unusually readable for a neuroscience article and worth your time: read it in full here. For the wider evidence on why physical, real-world play beats the screen alternative, start with why real play matters, see how garden play fits family life in garden games for families, or browse the rest of the expert library.
According to Panksepp's research, yes, profoundly so. Rough-and-tumble play activates a dedicated brain system shared by all mammals, and through it children practise impulse control, reading other people, and managing their own strength and excitement. The wrestling match on the living room floor is not a failure of discipline. It is development happening at full volume.
Panksepp proposed that abundant physical play in early childhood may reduce ADHD-type symptoms, and that play deprivation may worsen them. It was a hypothesis built on strong animal evidence, not a proven treatment, and it is no substitute for professional advice if you have concerns. But generous daily doses of vigorous play are safe, free and exactly what the young brain evolved to expect.
For most young children, constant motion is the PLAY and SEEKING systems doing their job, not a warning sign. Panksepp's work suggests the urge to chase, climb and tumble is wired in, and strongest in early childhood. The kindest response is usually more opportunity, not less: garden time, chase games, a parent willing to be the monster for ten more minutes.
Not really. The system Panksepp described is physical and social: it runs on movement, touch, laughter and another player who responds in real time. A tablet game may engage attention, but it cannot deliver the bodily rough-and-tumble his research centred on. If the PLAY circuit is a muscle, screens leave it largely unexercised.
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