Based on the abovementioned evidence, we hypothesized that maternally deprived rats would display more anxiety and/or depressive-like behaviors in a series of behavioral tests and express less NPY in the basolateral amygdala (BLA), ventral hippocampus (vHPC) and dorsal hippocampus (dHPC), two emotional behavior-related brain areas. This evidence concerns the gene NPY and Anxiety.