Porencephaly

Last edited and medically reviewed by Alaric Steinmetz on 20.08.2026

Porencephaly refers to a circumscribed intracerebral formation of cavities of varying extent, which may be bounded by abnormal polymicrogyric gray matter. The cause may vary. Trauma, infarctions, and hemorrhages, among others, have been described as causes in the literature¹. Porencephaly may occur with familial clustering², and an association with the Col4a1 gene has been described in animal studies³.

References

Berg, Robert A., Kyriekos A. Aleck, and Allen M. Kaplan. "Familial porencephaly." Archives of neurology 40.9 (1983): 567-569. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
Gould, Douglas B., et al. "Mutations in Col4a1 cause perinatal cerebral hemorrhage and porencephaly." Science 308.5725 (2005): 1167-1171. ↩ ↩