Burdenko's life story

Stuart Brown from his book Play:

“The properties are what make play, for me, the essence of freedom. The things that most tie you down or constrain you- the need to be practical, to follow established rules, to please others, to make good use of time, all wrapped up in self-conscious guilt- are eliminated. Play is its own reward, its own reason for being.”

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“Animals that play learn a lot more quickly how to navigate their world and adapt to it. In short they are smarter. Neuroscientist Sergio Pellis of the University of Lethbridge in Canada, and neuroscientist Andrew Iwaniuk and Biologist John Nelson of of Monash University in Melbourne Australia reported that there is a strong positive link between brain size and playfulness for mammals in general. For their study, which was the most extensive quantitative comparative study of juvenile play ever published, they measured brain size and tabulated play behavior in fifteen species of mammals that ranged from dogs to dolphins. They found that when they made allowances for differing body size, the species with larger brains (compared to body size) played a lot and the species with smaller brains played less.

Another renowned senior play researcher Jaak Panksepp, has shown that active play selectively stimulates brain-derived neurotrophic factor (which stimulates nerve growth) in the amygdala (one emotional processing place) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (executive decisions processed there)