Abstract: The causes of cerebral palsy are multifactorial, including antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal. Domestic scholars generally believed that intrapartum and postnatal factors are the main reasons for cerebral palsy, while in recent years, the foreign scholars suggest that prenatal factors account for the majority of the causes of cerebral palsy. This paper is to review the recent research on the causes of cerebral palsy and to introduce the theory of etiological pathway and determine the period of brain injury in cerebral palsy patients.

Key words: cerebral palsy, etiology, premature infant, intrauterine infection, periventricular leukomalacia (PVL), etiological pathway, review