Intracerebral calcifications

Intracerebral calcifications are occasionally seen in skull X-rays or on postmortem examination. They appear physiologically in the pineal body, the falx and in certain amounts in the arteries. Socalled 'brain stones' may follow tuberculosis, abscesses, toxoplasmosis or other infections of the central nervous system. They may also occur in metabolic conditions such as disorders of the parathyroid, in congenital conditions such as tuberous sclerosis and intracranial vascular malformations and in other diseases. A patient with idiopathic calcifications of the brain and another with post-traumatic calcification are reported. A third patient with macroscopic nonarteriosclerotic calcifications of brain arteries, Fahr's disease, is also reported and the case documented histologically. Computerized tomography is of great help in the exact localization of these calcifications.