Central nervous system changes in glaucoma

Glaucoma is a group of neurodegenerative diseases characterized by progressive retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) apoptosis, optic nerve fiber layer loss and characteristic visual field defect.Recently, more and more studies indicate that the glaucomatous damage occurred to not only RGCs in the eyes, but also optic nerves, optic chiasm, optic beam, lateral geniculate nucleus and the visual cortex.The neural degenerations could be identified through the whole visual system.Glaucoma is a complex syndrome based on multiple levels and multiple factors.From the visual pathway of multilevel neurons level more in-depth study glaucomatous visual pathway injury characteristics, timely detection of early minimal changes of glaucoma patients throughout the visual pathway, from the new understanding of the disease, to the development of clinical diagnosis and treatment methods, early diagnosis, early treatment, effective delay of glaucoma blindness process has increasingly become the focus of community and neural science circles of ophthalmology.The progress in the study of the central nervous system changes induced by glaucoma was reviewed briefly.