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.
Posterior cingulate cortex
The posterior cingulate cortex forms a central node in the default mode network of the brain. It has been shown to communicate with various brain networks simultaneously and is involved in various functions. Along with the precuneus, the posterior cingulate cortex has been implicated as a neural substrate for human awareness in numerous studies of both the anesthesized and vegetative (coma) state. Imaging studies indicate a prominent role for the posterior cingulate cortex in pain and episodic memory retrieval. Increased size of posterior ventral cingulate cortex is related to declines in working memory performance. The posterior cingulate cortex has been strongly implicated as a key part of several intrinsic control networks.