OXTR and Anxiety: OXT can act directly via OXTR signaling on postsynaptic neurons to alter the activity of key components of neural circuits regulating social behaviors as seen in circuits controlling female social approach to males at specific phases of the estrus cycle (Nakajima et al., 2014), anxiety-related behaviors in male mice (Li et al., 2016), and maternal responses to pup calls (Marlin et al., 2015).