New near-infrared (NIR) observations of galaxies with circumnuclear starbursts and of Seyfert galaxies have shown both the importance of high-resolution imaging in the NIR, and of non-axisymmetric structures (e.g. bars) in the process of fuelling the central regions. I will discuss recent results of imaging surveys showing that the presence of a bar is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for Seyfert activity. I will also show new NIR images of central regions of galaxies at spatial resolutions well below half an arcsec, using adaptive optics techniques.