Cerebral atrophy is a common feature of many of the diseases that affect the brain. Atrophy of any tissue means loss of cells. In brain tissue, atrophy describes a loss of neurons and the connections between them. Atrophy can be generalized, which means that all of the brain has shrunk; or it can be focal, affecting only a limited area of the brain and resulting in a decrease of the functions that area of the brain controls. If the cerebral hemispheres (the two lobes of the brain that form the cerebrum) are affected, conscious thought and voluntary processes may be impaired. The following codes are used with International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. ... The following is a list of codes for International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. ... Comparative brain sizes In the anatomy of animals, the brain, or encephalon (Greek for in the head), is the higher, supervisory center of the nervous system. ... Atrophy is the partial or complete wasting away of a part of the body. ... Neurons (also spelled neurones or called nerve cells) are the primary cells of the nervous system. ... Human brain viewed from above, showing cerebral hemispheres. ...

Associated diseases and disorders

The pattern and rate of progression of cerebral atrophy depends on the disease involved. Diseases that cause cerebral atrophy include:

• stroke and traumatic brain injury
• Alzheimer's disease, Pick’s disease, senile dementia, fronto-temporal dementia, and vascular dementia
• cerebral palsy, in which lesions (damaged areas) may impair motor coordination
• Huntington’s disease, and other genetic disorders that cause build-up of toxic levels of proteins in neurons
• leukodystrophies, such as Krabbe disease, which destroy the myelin sheath that protects axons
• mitochondrial encephalomyopathies, such as Kearns-Sayre syndrome, which interfere with the basic functions of neurons
• multiple sclerosis, which causes inflammation, myelin damage, and lesions in cerebral tissue
• infectious diseases, such as encephalitis, neurosyphilis, and AIDS, in which an infectious agent or the inflammatory reaction to it destroys neurons and their axons
• epilepsy, in which lesions cause abnormal electrochemical discharges that result in seizures

A stroke or cerebrovascular accident (CVA) occurs when the blood supply to a part of the brain is suddenly interrupted. ... Dementia (from Latin demens) is progressive decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease in the brain beyond what might be expected from normal aging. ... Cerebral palsy or CP is a group of permanent disorders associated with developmental brain injuries that occur during fetal development, birth, or shortly after birth. ... A genetic disorder, or genetic disease is a disease caused, at least in part, by the genes of the person with the disease. ... Krabbe disease (also known as globoid cell leukodystrophy) is a rare, often fatal degenerative disorder that affects the nervous system. ... In neuroscience, myelin is an electrically insulating fatty layer that surrounds the axons of many neurons, especially those in the peripheral nervous system. ... An axon, or nerve fibre, is a long slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, which conducts electrical impulses away from the neurons cell body or soma. ... Kearns-Sayre syndrome (KSS) is a disease caused by mutations in the mitochondrial DNA. As such, it is a rare genetic disease in that it can be heteroplasmic, that is, more than one genome can be in a cell at any given time. ... In medicine, infectious disease or communicable disease is disease caused by a biological agent (e. ... Encephalitis is an acute inflammation of the brain, commonly caused by a viral infection. ... The Red Ribbon is the global symbol for solidarity with HIV-positive people and those living with AIDS. AIDS is an acronym for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and is defined as a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the depletion of the immune system caused...

Symptoms

Many diseases that cause cerebral atrophy are associated with dementia, seizures, and a group of language disorders called the aphasias. Dementia is characterized by a progressive impairment of memory and intellectual function that is severe enough to interfere with social and work skills. Memory, orientation, abstraction, ability to learn, visual-spatial perception, and higher executive functions such as planning, organizing and sequencing may also be impaired. Seizures can take different forms, appearing as disorientation, strange repetitive movements, loss of consciousness, or convulsions. Aphasias are a group of disorders characterized by disturbances in speaking and understanding language. Receptive aphasia causes impaired comprehension. Expressive aphasia is reflected in odd choices of words, the use of partial phrases, disjointed clauses, and incomplete sentences. Seizures(or convulsions) are temporary alterations in brain function expressing themselves into a changed mental state, tonic or clonic movements and various other symptoms. ... Aphasia is a loss or impairment of the ability to produce or comprehend language, due to brain damage. ...