Hunting for excitement: NMDA receptors in Huntington's disease

Excitotoxic cell death stimulated by quinolinic acid injection into the striatum has a long history of "mimicking" many aspects of motor, behavioral, and neurochemical changes observed in Huntington's disease patients. In this issue of Neuron, provide insight into the role of NMDA receptors in the cell-specific excitotoxic death observed in Huntington's disease (HD) using a HD mouse model expressing full-length mutant huntingtin (htt).