A group of inherited progressive degenerative brain diseases characterized clinically by a decline of mental and other capacities, epilepsy, and vision loss through retinal degeneration, and histopathologically by intracellular accumulation of an autofluorescent material, ceroid lipofuscin, in the neuronal cells in the brain and in the retina. The disease is Monarch Disease Ontology id MONDO_0016295 (neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis). Also known as: NCL, ceroid lipofuscinoses, hereditary ceroid lipofuscinosis.