Transitory global amnesia

Retention of personal identity despite memory loss. Normal cognition, such as the ability to recognize and name familiar objects and follow simple directions. What causes trans global amnesia? During an episode of TGA, a person is not able to make new memories.

The person may be disoriented in regard to time and place, but can remember who they are and can recognize family members.

Transient global amnesia ( TGA ) is a mysterious syndrome causing a relatively brief inability to form new memories. It usually happens in people who are middle-aged or elderly (most commonly after the age of 60). You may not be able to remember information or experiences from the recent past, or remember new information.

For example, you may not know where you are or how you got there. Clinically, it manifests with a paroxysmal, transient loss of memory function. Patients with TGA typically have no difficulties recognizing family members, and can recall things from the past.

Sudden immersion in cold or hot water.

Acute emotional distress. Most symptoms are transient and resolve within a few hours. A person in a state of TGA exhibits no other signs of impaired cognitive functioning but recalls only.

During a TGA episode, a person cannot form new memories (a condition called anterograde amnesia ) and has difficulty recalling recent memories (a condition called retrograde amnesia ). It is a temporary lapse in memory that can never be retrieved. Due clinical diligence is required in the investigation of these patients. The etiology of TGA remains obscure. Many clinicians would not have encountered it, and those not familiar with its presentation can miss the diagnosis.

This form of amnesia is distinct in that abnormalities in the hippocampus can sometimes be visualized using a special form of magnetic resonance imaging of the brain known as diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). Symptoms typically last for less than a day and there is often no clear precipitating factor or any other neurological deficits. Although patients may be disoriente not know where they are or be confused about time, they are otherwise alert, attentive and have normal thinking abilities. If you need reassurance, ask your doctor to go over the of your neurological exam and diagnostic tests with you.

The period of memory loss lasts for a few hours from onset. Here is a video that briefly explains what transient global amnesia is and what happens to the patient. Background and Purpose The purpose of the present study was to make an attempt to ascertain the etiology of transient global amnesia (TGA), which is still disputed more than years after the first description of this clinical entity.

Methods In a case-control study, we compared the prevalence of vascular risk factors in TGA patients.

Global means that the loss of memory is severe and often total. Amnesia means a loss of memory. It almost never happens to anyone under the age of 5 and its frequency among people over is estimated to about out of 100on a yearly basis.

Diagnosis is primarily clinical but includes laboratory tests and CT, MRI, or both. The amnesia typically remits spontaneously but may recur. There is no specific treatment, but underlying abnormalities are corrected. Zuchowski had seen a couple of cases of this neurological oddity when she was in medical school in Syracuse, N. Although there are many known causes of transient amnesia , the syndrome of TGA remains of unknown. The person isn’t able to create new memories and they have trouble remembering things from the recent past.

The rest of the cognitive functions (consciousness, personal identity, attention…) remain intact. The transient global amnesia syndrome: an analysis of cases. As its name suggests, TGA episode is sudden, transient (temporary) memory loss.