The social behavior network as originally suggested for mammals (schematics modified from Newman, 1999). The network is comprised of six nodes – the extended medial amygdala (i.e., the medial amygdala and the medial bed nucleus of stria terminalis, BSTm), the lateral septum (LS), the preoptic area (POA), the anterior hypothalamus (AH), the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) and various areas of the midbrain, including the periaqueductal gray. Each of the nodes binds sex steroid hormones and has been implicated in the control of multiple forms of social behavior. Newman (1999) proposes that this network does not contain segregated, linear systems for each kind of behavior. Rather, as shown in these schematic representations of immediate early gene data, each behavioral context is associated with a distinct pattern of activation across the nodes.