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.
Hemoencephalography
Most research in HEG has focused on disorders of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the cortical region directly behind the forehead that controls high level executive functions such as planning, judgment, emotional regulation, inhibition, organization, and cause and effect determination. The prefrontal cortex is thought essential for all goal-directed and socially-mediated behavior. The PFC is an ideal target for HEG due to both its location on the scalp (behind the forehead, where there is no hair to disrupt the scattering of the red and infrared light) and the susceptibility of its primary functions to learning.