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.
Cingulate cortex
The rostral cingulate gyrus (Brodmanns's area 32) projects to the rostral superior temporal gyrus, midorbitofrontal cortex and lateral prefrontal cortex.
The ventral anterior cingulate (Brodmann's area 24) sends projections to the anterior insular cortex, premotor cortex (Brodmann's area 6), Brodmann's area 8, the perirhinal area, the orbitofrontal cortex (Brodmann's area 12), the laterobasal nucleus of amygdala, and the rostral part of the inferior parietal lobule. Injecting wheat germ agglutinin and horseradish peroxidase conjugate into the anterior cingulate gyrus of cats, revealed that the anterior cingulate gyrus has reciprocal connections with the rostral part of the thalamic posterior lateral nucleus and rostral end of the pulvinar.
The postsubiculum receives projections from the retrospleinal dysgranular cortex and the retrosplenial granular cortex A and B. The parasubiculum receives projections from the retrosplenial dysgranular cortex and retrosplenial granular cortex A. Caudal and lateral parts of the entorhinal cortex get projections from the retrosplenial dysgranular cortex, while the caudal medial entorhinal cortex receives projections from the retrosplenial granular cortex A. The retrosplenial dysgranular cortex sends projections to the perirhinal cortex. The retrospleinal granular cortex A sends projection to the rostral presubiculum.