ABSTRACT
Cell death has been classifi ed into three types: a) apoptotic (Type I), b) autophagic (Type II) and c) necrotic/oncotic (Type III). Necrosis and apoptosis have been well studied in neuronal cell death. Despite that we are still witnessing growing evidence for the involvement of autophagy and autophagy-induced cell death in both acute neural injury (such as traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury and stroke) as well as various neurodegenerative disease conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease and Prion disease. Interestingly, there also exists a signifi cant overlap in the biochemical pathways that suggest crosstalk between different forms of cell death. Another common theme appears to be the involvement of proteases in all three forms of cell death. This chapter will focus on our current understanding of all the above mentioned pathways of cell death, and how they together affect the fi nal outcome in the neuron’s fate.
