Social interactions are known to be an essential component of infant development. For this reason, exploring functional neural activity while infants are engaged in social interactions will enable a better understanding of the infant social brain. This in turn, will enable the beginning of disentangling the neural basis of social and non-social interactions as well as the influence that maternal engagement has on infant brain function. Maternal sensitivity serves as a model for socio-emotional development during infancy, which poses the question: do interactions between parents and their offspring present altered electrophysiological responses in comparison to the general population if said parents are at risk of mental health disorders? The current research aimed to observe the oscillatory activity of 6-month-old infants during spontaneous free-play interactions with their mother. A 5-minute unconstrained free-play session was recorded between infant-mother dyads with EEG recordings taken from the 6-month-old infants (n = 64). During the recording, social and non-social behaviours were coded and EEG assessed with these epochs.

Results showed an increase in oscillatory activity both when an infant played independently or interacted with their mother and oscillatory power was greatest in the alpha and theta bands. In the present 6-month-old cohort, no hemispheric power differences were observed as oscillatory power in the corresponding neural regions (i.e. left and right temporal regions) appeared to mirror each other. Instead, temporal estimates were larger and different from all other regions, whilst the frontal and parietal regions bihemispherically displayed similar estimates, which were larger than those observed centrally, but smaller than those displayed in the temporal locations. The interactions observed between the behavioural events and frequency bands demonstrated a significant reduction in power comparative to the power observed in the gamma band during the baseline event.

The present research sought to explore the obstacle of artificial play paradigms for neuroscience research, whereby researchers question how much these paradigms relate to reality. The present manuscript will discuss the strengths and limitations of taking an unconstrained free-play approach.

众所周知，社交互动是婴儿发育的重要组成部分。因此，在婴儿参与社交互动时探索功能性神经活动将有助于更好地了解婴儿的社交大脑。反过来，这将有助于开始解开社会和非社会互动的神经基础以及母亲参与对婴儿大脑功能的影响。母亲的敏感性是婴儿期社会情感发展的一个模型，这就提出了一个问题：如果父母有心理健康障碍的风险，与一般人群相比，父母与其后代之间的互动是否会出现改变的电生理反应？目前的研究旨在观察 6 个月大的婴儿在与母亲自发的自由游戏互动中的振荡活动。在婴儿-母亲二人之间记录了 5 分钟不受限制的自由游戏会话，并从 6 个月大的婴儿（n= 64）。在记录过程中，对社会和非社会行为进行编码，并用这些时期评估脑电图。

结果显示，当婴儿独立玩耍或与母亲互动时，振荡活动增加，并且振荡能力在 alpha 和 theta 波段中最大。在目前 6 个月大的队列中，没有观察到半球功率差异，因为相应神经区域（即左右颞区）的振荡功率似乎彼此镜像。相反，时间估计值更大且与所有其他区域不同，而双半球的额叶和顶叶区域显示出类似的估计值，这些估计值大于中央观察到的估计值，但小于时间位置显示的估计值。

本研究试图探索人工游戏范式对神经科学研究的障碍，研究人员由此质疑这些范式与现实的关联程度。本手稿将讨论采用不受约束的自由游戏方法的优势和局限性。