Originally posted by Ritual
It\'s called Creutzfeldt-Jacob\'s Disease. You don\'t have to eat brains to get it, but it was uncommonly frequent among a people on some desolate island (can\'t remember the name) who allegedly ate the brains of their dead IIRC. Normally, CJ\'s disease is very uncommon.
EDIT: Noticed philo logus mentioned this too...
CJD can be caused by eating brains (kuru), eating contaminated meat (variant CJD - the British beef scare), getting infected transplant tissue (corneal transplants and other graft tissues), and there are hereditary forms of CJD as well.
Other animals have their own versions of CJD - scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease in elk, and mink encephalopathy. Carnivores beware.
Sylar is probably going to kill himself by eating someone\'s brain with CJD, unless he eats the cheerleader\'s brain first.