Some forms of neuronal death after ischemia can be explained by the apoptosis-necrosis cell death continuum. This neurodegeneration may fall along a structural and mechanistic continuum. As with non-NMDA GluR-mediated excitotoxicity (Figs. 4 and 7), ischemic neuronal death could be a hybrid of apoptosis and necrosis (Figs. 3-5), with this degeneration not strictly apoptosis or necrosis, according to the traditional binary classification of cell death, but occurring as intermediate or hybrid forms with coexisting characteristics.