Cambridge University is aiming to study how a child's playtime affects his or her mental development by opening up a Lego professorship.
The prestigious U.K. school announced the professorship last week in a news release and noted it will go into effect for the next academic year. The Lego Foundation pledged $2.5 million pounds for the professorship.
The Lego Foundation, the Lego Group's research wing, owns a quarter of the entire building block company, which Bloomberg News valued at $14.6 billion in a 2013 report.
"The Professorship will be funded by a benefaction of £2.5m from the Lego Foundation as an endowment to be held on trust by the University," Cambridge's General Board said in the release. "The Lego Foundation has also provided funding to support a Research Centre on Play in Education, Development, and Learning (PEDaL) to which the LEGO Professor will be appointed Director."
According to Cambridge's website the endowment will pay for "both the capital and the income may be used to support a Research Centre on Play in Education, Development, and Learning within the Faculty of Education."
The Lego building blocks have long been hailed as educational and creatively supportive, and Cambridge's new professorship will look for specific reasons why.
Sergio Pellis, a researcher at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, told NPR in 2013 that playtime is important for children's brain development. He also noted it is important that kids use their own minds to set the parameters for playtime.
"The experience of play changes the connections of the neurons at the front end of your brain," he said. "And without play experience, those neurons aren't changed.
"Whether it's rough-and-tumble play or two kids deciding to build a sand castle together, the kids themselves have to negotiate, well, what are we going to do in this game? What are the rules we are going to follow?"
