Affective neuroscience research by Jaak Panksepp and others has identified conserved emotional systems across mammals that inform our understanding of animal welfare and suffering.
Affective neuroscience has grounded animal welfare science in biology in a way that reduces reliance on behavioral proxies alone. Demonstrating that animals have neurochemically conserved emotional systems equivalent to human emotions makes denying animal subjective experience scientifically untenable. The PLAY system in particular has informed enrichment science by establishing that play is a primary motivated behavior, not a luxury.