The intention to conceal activates the right prefrontal cortex: an event-related potential study

Recent studies on deception have shown that a late positive potential (LPP), a component of event-related brain potentials, is elicited when a participant wishes to conceal recognition of the eliciting stimulus. The LPP occurs about 500 ms after stimulus onset and has an occipital scalp distribution with concurrent negativity at frontal sites. The present study investigated the cortical sources of the LPP associated with the intention to conceal. Standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography analysis was applied on previously published concealment-related LPP data (Matsuda, Nittono, and Ogawa, 2013, N=30). The cortical sources of the LPP were estimated in the right middle frontal gyrus and the right inferior frontal gyrus, which fits well with the findings of fMRI studies. Previous research suggests that activities in the middle frontal gyrus and the right inferior frontal gyrus are associated with cognitive control and that greater relative right than left frontal activities are associated with withdrawal motivation. On the basis of these findings, it is concluded that the LPP may reflect cognitive control with withdrawal motivation that is recruited by the participants' goal of concealing their recognition and avoiding disclosure. A positive potential at occipital sites can be a sign of the activation in the prefrontal cortex.