ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how play facilitates healthy brain development and functioning, aligned to the concept of mental capital which is acquired in childhood and adolescence and maintained and developed in adulthood until its decline in older age. The concept of mental capital is defined as ‘the totality of an individual’s cognitive and emotional resources, including their cognitive capability, flexibility and efficiency of learning, emotional intelligence, and resilience in the face of stress. The neurodevelopmental sequencing of the brain starts from the most basic, regulatory regions situated in the brainstem. The limbic system consists of a set of structures that are located on both sides of the brain, including the hippocampus and the amygdale. The ‘higher brain’ enables ‘the highest and finest analysis of sensory and motor integration, learning and skilled tasks the basis of adaptive capabilities, introspection, planning and speech in humans’.
