Since completing his PhD at Bowling Green University under the mentorship of Jaak Panksepp, Stephen Siviy has spent more than 20 years extending Panksepp's affective neuroscience research into the biology of play. As Chair of the Psychology Department at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, he runs a rat lab focused on identifying the neurobiological substrates of mammalian playfulness — how brain chemistry including opioids, dopamine, and norepinephrine regulates the motivation to play, and how stress disrupts the play system. He has published widely in Behavioural Brain Research, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, and the Journal of Comparative Psychology.
