Bilateral cingulotomy
Neuroimaging also uncovered different sub-regions in the anterior cingulate cortex itself based on their function. These studies showed that the caudal part of the anterior cingulate cortex plays a more important function in cognitive activities that involve attention, salience, interference and response competition. These results combined with electrophysiological investigation of the function of neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex have provided insights that can be used in the improvement of cingulotomy performed on patients treated for OCD. The basis behind this idea is the fact that a variation of certain tasks, Emotional Stroop tasks (ES), which have been particularly identified as exerting effects in OCD patients activate neurons in the more rostral part of the anterior cingulate cortex. Thus, theoretically if bilateral cingulotomy is performed in such patient in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, better results should be obtained.
Identity disturbance
One critical system implicated in this line of research involves the cortical midline structures (CMS), which includes the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and the posterior cingulate cortex including the adjacent precuneus. Greater activation in these structures has been found when people made trait judgements about themselves as opposed to others, as well as during a resting state ("see" default mode network) or self-referential activity compared to when involved in a non-self-referential task. In addition to this correlational evidence linking these regions to our self-identity, one study using transcranial magnetic stimulation to transiently disturb neural activity in the medial parietal region of cortex found that this disruption lead to a decreased ability to retrieve previous judgements of oneself compared to the retrieval of previous judgements of others.