Despite hundreds of years of research and theorizing, questions concerning play behaviour, such as what qualifies as play, what brain mechanisms are needed to produce play, and of what benefit, if any, does play have to our lives, remain unanswered. Over time, biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and educators have generated more opinions than solid evidence with play vacillating between being seen as instrumental to the development of healthy individuals and as a childish waste of time.

With reference to a range of species, but using the trusty rat as their model, the authors synthesize three decades of empirical research to create the first truly integrated study that appreciates the significance of such previously neglected phenomena as the multi-functionality of play, the different forms of play that exist between species, and the evolutionary aspects that are responsible for it all.

Professor Sergio Pellis and Associate Professor Vivien Pellis both work at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.

"This book is uniquely important not just in giving play the space it so richly deserves, but in the extraordinarily comprehensive coverage that it offers and the lucidity with which it gives us glimpses beneath the surface of something that has played such a formative role in each of our individual life stories." Robin Dunbar, Director of the Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology, Oxford Unversity

“The Playful Brain is just what is needed as play behaviour continues to emerge as one of the most important activities in which nonhuman and human animals engage.This book will set the standard for future interdisciplinary research involving biologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists.” Marc Bekoff, author of 'Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals' (with Jessica Pierce) and 'Animals at Play: Rules of the Game'