A brain disease in humans and animals in which areas of the brain slowly develop holes in their cells and begin to look like a sponge.
A disease of the neurological system caused by a prion. Spongy degeneration of the brain occurs: with progressive dementia. Known examples of the disorder in humans are creutzfeldt-jakob disease (CJD) and kuru. Among animals, scrapie in sheep and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) are similarly caused. The latter has occurred as an outbreak in cattle over the past decade or so, probably as a result of cattle being fed processed offal from infected animals. Some people have developed a variant form of CJD from eating infected beef.
A neurological condition characterized by the shrinking of brain tissue and the formation of gaps within it, leading to severe symptoms like paralysis and dementia.