Research on autophagy as a mechanism for regulating cell death or survival has generated huge interest in recent years.Although both autophagy and apoptosis can function independently from each other, recent reports show that they may be interlinked to induce cell death.This study aimed to investigate the roles of extracellular signal regulated kinase (ERK) pathway in autophagy and apoptosis mediated by glutamate receptors after subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH).