leucotomy on the one hand and modified leucotomies, such as rostral leucotomy, cingulotomy, etc., on the other. in the 1970s the term psychosurgery became more popular as a generic term, with individual operations being named according to the part of the brain in which tissue is destroyed, for example, cingulotomy, capsulotomy, subcaudate tractotomy, amygdalotomy, etc. the term leucotomy is still used to refer to the standard prefrontal leucotomies of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and is occasionally used as a generic term for psychosurgical operations. some doctors prefer the term neurosurgery for mental disorder (nmd) to psychosurgery. the american term lobotomy has never been used by medical writers in the uk to describe a psychosurgical operation on the frontal lobe. the standard freeman-watts operation, called a lobotomy in the us, was called a leucotomy in the uk. freeman later developed a psychosurgical technique in which an instrument is inserted through the eye-socket. it became known as a transorbital lobotomy in the us and a transorbital leucotomy in the uk (where it was less popular). however the term lobotomy is occasionally used by british journalists synonymously with leucotomy, either to describe the standard operations of former decades or occasionally as a generic term for all psychosurgical operations.