Playing to Improve the Brain

"Play certainly seems to facilitate an animal's ability to move in a more deftly coordinated and responsive way.  Chasing, tumbling, and scrambling about are a requisite part of strengthening muscles, honing eye-limb coordination, and laying down essential synaptic pathways to the brain.  Limb and eye-limb movements are coordinated in the cerebellum, and the number of cerebellar synapes is significantly influences by behavior.  Not surprisingly, there is a relationship between play and synaptic growth.  ...  Physical skills, such as those involved in hunting or defense, stem at least in part from the complex behaviors learned and practiced during play.  Most young mammals play with objects, an activity which, among other things, teaches them how to catch prey and how to explore the physical world.  Many species― including our own, nonhuman primates, rats, and those in the mustelid family― show a preference for complex and novel play rather than simple object manipulation."
-  Kay Redfield Jamison M.D., Exuberance, p.51

Fingers, Hands, Touching, Feeling, Somatics, Haptics: Quotations, Bibliography, Notes

Jamison, Kay Redfield, M.D.  Exuberance: The Passion for Life.  Vintage, 2005.  Detailed notes, index, 416 pages.  ISBN: 9780375701481.  VSCL.