Owing to several observational evidences and theoretical predictions for morphological evolution of galaxies, it is now widely accepted that galaxies do evolve from late types to early ones along the Hubble sequence. It is also well established that non-axisymmetric potentials of bar-like or oval mass distributions can change the morphology of galaxies significantly during the Hubble time. Here, we review the observational and theoretical grounds of the secular evolution driven by bar-like potentials, and present the results of SPH simulations for the response of the gaseous disks to the imposed potentials to explore the secular evolution in the central regions of barred galaxies.