Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul

KCUR

Published March 5, 2009 at 10:16 AM CST

Children do it by instinct yet by the time many of us are adults, we've buried our capacity to engage in play in its purest form. By Up to Date, March 5, 2009

Kansas City , Mo. –

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In this edition of Up to Date Steve Kraske talks with Dr. Stuart Brown, author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul.?

Together they explore the importance this most basic activity has in brain development and social interaction as well as the surprising impact lack of play can have on a life.?

Also, Denise Filley of the KC Play Therapy Institute explains the way play helps in treating a variety of conditions and strengthens family bonds.

Additional Information:

Stuart Brown, M.D. is the founder of The National Institute for Play.? He received his B.S. from Wheaton College in Illinois and his medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.? Trained in general and internal medicine, psychiatry and clinical research, he first discovered the importance of play by discerning its absence in a carefully studied group of homicidal young males, beginning with the University of Texas Tower mass murderer, Charles Whitman. He later became founding Clinical Director and Chief of Psychiatry at Mercy Hospital and Medical Center and an Associate Professor at UCSD in San Diego, California.? Over the course of his clinical career, he interviewed thousands of people to capture their play profiles.? Upon finishing his clinical career in 1989, Dr. Brown turned to the full-time study of play and its effects.

Denise K. Filley, MA is the Director and Founder of KC Play Therapy Training Institute and has been practicing play therapy for over 12 years. She has a Master's degree in Counseling from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia and is a 2007 graduate of the Association for Play Therapy (APT) Leadership Academy.? Filley has served on the Kansas APT board as President, Past President and Secretary.? She has also been honored with several awards in the field of play therapy, including the APT membership campaign winner award for five years.