Hello dear,welcome to Ask a doctor service. I reviewed your query and here is my advice. 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 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, and fronto-temporal dementia cerebral palsy, in which lesions (damaged areas) may impair motor coordination Huntington’s disease, and other hereditary diseases that are associated with genetic mutations 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 Hope I have answered the question. Let me know if I can assist you further.