The experience of inclusion is known to ameliorate aversive effects of social exclusion. We investigated subjective responses to exclusion (Need-threat, Study 1), as well as attention to signs of exclusion and inclusion (P3b, Study 2). Participants played a Cyberball task consisting of an inclusion session after an exclusion session. Study 1 indicated that the need-threat level was negatively correlated between exclusion and inclusion sessions in the high trait self-esteem (HSE) group, whereas the low trait self-esteem (LSE) group did not show such a relationship. Study 2 suggested that reduction of exclusion impact and P3b amplitude related to signs of inclusion were more closely related in the HSE than in the LSE group. These results suggest amelioration from social exclusion by included experience is affected by trait self-esteem, due to differences in attention allocation.

According to the autism spectrum theory, it is assumed that normally developed persons with high traits of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) share sensitivity to sensory changes with people of ASD, particularly to local rather than global changes. To test this assumption, normally developed students were examined. By using the autism spectrum quotient (AQ), high and low AQ groups were assembled. Sensory processing of participants was assessed by using the adult/adolescent sensory profile (AASP). For the two groups, mismatch negativity (MMN) in response to local and global auditory changes was recorded. The high AQ group revealed a tendency to have a similar AASP to people with ASD. The MMN of the high AQ group showed that responses to global changes were larger than responses to local changes. This result suggests that the high AQ group can easily perceive patterns of local auditory changes, leading to difficulty achieving MMN in response to local changes.

The cerebellum is known to be involved in motor processing. However, decade-long studies have demonstrated that the cerebellum is also related to non-motor processes including cognitions and emotions. Moreover, the cerebellar contribution to unconscious motor processing is known, but it remains unclear whether the cerebellum is engaged in unconscious non-motor processing. We conducted functional MRI to examine the cerebellar contribution to unconscious affective processing related to subliminal emotional faces. We found that lobule VI of the right cerebellum showed increased activation for supraliminal angry faces, but not for subliminal emotional faces. These results suggest that there are no cerebellar contributions to unconscious affective processing.

In this study, we controlled the relationship between participants and stimuli to reduce individual differences in the evoked affective states and examined whether the affective state impacts on N400 and P600 amplitudes of the ERP. Students who like dogs and had ones were presented films related to dogs. Half of 24 participants watched positive films (a positive group) and the remaining half watched negative ones (a negative group). After watching, a Japanese sentence-judgment task was completed by the participants. N400 to semantic violation was confirmed for both groups, and its amplitude was significantly larger for the positive group. In contrast, P600 to syntactic violation was confirmed only for the positive group. These results indicate that the affective states influenced on the sentence processing and it is possible to clearly confirm the influence of the affective states on sentence processing by controlling individual differences in the evoked affective states.