Volume 12 Issue 12, December 2007

Behavioral and neuroanatomical elements of hypergrooming induced by oxytocin (OT) microinjected into central amygdala nucleus. Top wide panel depicts immunofluorescent OT neurons and fibres in the PVN-SO hypothalamic complex. The film strip in the bottom panel illustrates confocal frames of OT receptor binding (green), OT immunohistochemistry (red) and co-localization of OT receptor and peptide (orange) intermixed with frames of rat grooming. Hypergrooming induced by bilateral microinjections of OT into central nucleus of amygdala is proposed as a new experimental model of compulsion. The retrograde labeling of hypothalamic OT neurons (not shown) with Fluorogold microinjected into amygdala completes the protocol. For more information on this topic, please refer to article by Marroni et al on pages 1103–1117.