This study investigated event-related potentials (ERP) during

an oddball task in which detection of specific eye direction

was required of children with and without autism. The
detection of a change in eye direction elicited occipitotemporal negativity, which had two major differences between
children with and without autism. First, while this occipitotemporal negativity predominated in the right hemisphere of
typically developed children, it was distributed equally
bilaterally in children with autism. Second, the amplitude of
this negativity was more pronounced in typically developed
children in response to the detection of direct gaze as
compared to averted gaze, but was not sensitive to
direct/averted gaze direction in children with autism, which
converges with behavioral reports. The results concur with
previous literature, suggesting the importance of the right
hemisphere, especially the superior temporal sulcus, in gaze
processing. Results indicate that deviant neural substrates
might be involved in gaze processing in individuals with
autism.
An attempt was made to evaluate mental fatigue induced
during a VDT task using feature parameters extracted from an
event-related potential (ERP) P300. Since the peak of the
grand-averaged P300 waveform was not clear, it was
sometimes difficult to detect the amplitude and the latency.
The removal of the noisy electroencephalography (EEG)
waveform based on the cross-correlation between a grandaveraged waveform and each waveform was found to be
effective for making the P300 waveform clear. The parameter
extraction methods using a principal component analysis and
temporal changes of the cross-correlation function between
the grand- averaged waveform and each waveform were used
to evaluate mental fatigue. The P300b component and the
standard deviation of the lime lag t that corresponded to the

maximum cross-correlation between the grand- averaged

waveform and each EEG waveform were found to reflect some
aspects of mental fatigue (the decreased function of cognitive
information processing). Relevance to industry: Fatigue,
especially mental fatigue, is inevitable for office workers and
in life in general. Fatigue is usually related to a loss of
efficiency and disinclination to effort. It is important to
manage and cope with fatigue so that the workers do not
damage their health. It is also possible that cumulative mental
fatigue leads to decreased productivity in the workplace and
induces critical errors in the worst cases. Therefore, the
management of mental fatigue is important from the
viewpoint of occupational risk management, productivity, and
occupational health. This study presents a systematic
approach to the evaluation of mental fatigue induced during a
VDT task. The proposed method provides a useful means for
evaluating the state of mental fatigue, which would be
potentially applicable to the management of fatigue from the
three viewpoints, listed above and would lead to increased
agility in an organization.
This paper focuses on an investigation of Collaborative Virtual
Environment (CVE) technology for people with autism, paying
particular attention to the use of avatar representations of
emotions. A prima facie case for a CVE technological approach
is developed, which argues that CVE offers great potential
benefits for people with autism. An empirical study of people
with autism using a simulated CVE system has been carried
out. Results suggest that, on the whole, the participants were
able to recognize and operate the avatar representations
when communicating via the CVE system.
Theory of mind, attributing behaviors to mental states, is a
cognitive ability central to human social interactions. To

investigate the neural substrates of theory of mind reasoning,

we recorded human event-related brain potentials (ERP) while
participants made judgments about belief and judgments
about reality. A late ERP component (peaking around 800ms
post-stimulus) with a left frontal scalp distribution, which was
inconsistent with a source in the anterior para-cingulate
cortex and consistent with a source possibly in the left orbitofrontal cortex, differentiated judgments about belief and about
reality. This late left frontal component is probably associated
with the decoupling mechanism that distinguishes mental
states from reality.
Although under some conditions the attention-related late
positive event- related potential (ERP) response (LPC) is
apparently normal in autism during visual processing, the LPC
elicited by visuospatial processing may be compromised.
Results from this study provide evidence for abnormalities in
autism in two components of the LPC generated during spatial
processing. The early frontal distribution of the LPC which may
reflect attention orienting was delayed or missing in autistic
subjects during conditions in which attention was to
peripheral visual fields. The later parietal distribution of the
LPC which may be associated with context updating was
smaller in amplitude in autistic subjects regardless of
attention location. Both abnormalities suggest disruption of
function in spatial attention networks in autism. Evidence that
the cerebellar abnormalities in autism may underlie these
deficits comes from: (1) similar results in ERP responses and
spatial attention deficits in patients with cerebellar lesions; (2)
brainbehavior correlations in normally functioning individuals
associating the size of the posterior cerebellar vermis and the
latency of the frontal LPC; and (3) a previously reported
complementary correlation between the size of the posterior

vermal lobules and spatial orienting speed. Although the

scalp-recorded LPC is thought to be cortically generated, it
may be modulated by subcortical neural activity. The
cerebellum may serve as a modulating influence by affecting
the task-related antecedent attentional process. The
electrophysiological abnormalities reported here index spatial
attention deficits in autism that may reflect cerebellar
influence on both frontal and parietal spatial attention
function.
To investigate the neural substrates of theory of mind
reasoning in autism, this study recorded human event-related
brain potentials (ERP) while participants made judgments
about belief, and judgments about reality. Study continued
after the subjects went through an intervention program
through collaborative virtual environment to find any
deviations in the ERPs. Control group ERP clearly
differentiated the judgments about belief and reality and is
in concurrence with the results of the earlier studies. But the
target group has significant deviations from the control group.
It is also found that the after intervention ERP for the target
autistic group is different from before intervention. The results
indicate that there are differences in the ERPs of Control and
Autistic individuals related to theory of mind and also there is
a significant difference in the ERP of autistic individual before
and after intervention, probably indicating a change in social
cognition aspect of the autistic individual.