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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 May 15.
Published in final edited form as: Biol Psychiatry. 2018 Oct 25;85(10):792–801. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2018.10.008

Figure 2:

Figure 2:

Oxytocin acting in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis promotes social avoidance and vigilance (green line) and inhibits social approach (red line). Social stress induces a long term increases in activity of OT neurons (blue dots) in anteroventral BST (BSTav) and PVN. Infusion of OTR antagonist into anteromedial BST (BSTam) blocks stress-induced social avoidance and vigilance. Currently it is unknown whether the source of OT within the BSTam originates from BSTav or PVN OT neurons. Optical activation of dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) fibers (red lines) in BST is anxiogenic. This suggests that if OTR facilitates serotonin release in BNSTam as in NAc, increased serotonergic transmission would induce anxiogenic responses. Mouse drawing by N. Duque-Wilckens.