CRH and Anxiety: In Experiment 1, we compared anxiety-like behavior during metestrus and proestrus in nulliparous and primiparous rats, and examined anxiety-related gene expression (including selective subunits of the GABAAR and corticotropin-releasing hormone, CRH) in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and ventral hippocampus (vHPC), two brain regions critical for anxiety [28].