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
While many of the connections in non-human primates may be present in humans, they are less well documented. Studies have shown strong reciprocal connections to medial temporal lobe memory structures, such as the entorhinal cortex and the parahippocampal gyrus, which is known to be involved in associative learning and episodic memory. The human posterior cingulate cortex is also connected to areas involved in emotion and social behavior, attention (the lateral intraparietal cortex and precuneus), and learning and motivation (the anterior and lateral thalamic nucleus, caudate nucleus, orbitofrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex).