Symptoms
A person having an attack of TGA has almost no capacity to establish new memories, but generally appears otherwise mentally alert and lucid, possessing full knowledge of self-identity and identity of close family, and maintaining intact perceptual skills and a wide repertoire of complex learned behavior. The individual simply cannot recall anything that happened outside the last few minutes, while memory for more temporally distant events may or may not be largely intact. The degree of amnesia is profound, and, in the interval during which the individual is aware of his or her condition, is often accompanied by anxiety. The diagnostic criteria for TGA, as defined for purposes of clinical research, include:
- The attack was witnessed by a capable observer and reported as being a definite loss of recent memory (anterograde amnesia).
- There was an absence of clouding of consciousness or other cognitive impairment other than amnesia.
- There were no focal neurological signs or deficits during or after the attack.
- There were no features of epilepsy, or active epilepsy in the past two years, and the patient did not have any recent head injury.
- The attack resolved within 24 hours.
Read more about this topic: Transient Global Amnesia
Famous quotes containing the word symptoms:
“For anyone addicted to reading commonplace books ... finding a good new one is much like enduring a familiar recurrence of malaria, with fever, fits of shaking, strange dreams. Unlike a truly paludismic ordeal, however, the symptoms felt while savoring a collection of one man’s pet quotations are voluptuously enjoyable ...”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the “easy life of the gods” would be a lifeless life.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)