Engaging in play, especially with new individuals, is crucial for neuroplasticity to keep the brain young and improve in life domains.

“And I raised this because another one of the top 10 questions I get is, "How can I keep my brain young? How can I continue to learn? How can I get better in school, in sport, in life, in relationships, etc., emotionally, cognitively? ... if you really want to engage neuroplasticity at any age, what you need to do is return to the same sorts of practices and tools that your nervous system naturally used throughout development and that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to trigger this thing that we call neuroplasticity. Play at every stage of life is the way in which we learned the rules for that stage of life and play is the way in which we were able to test how we might function in the real world context.”