M. Kritchevsky et al., TRANSIENT GLOBAL AMNESIA AND FUNCTIONAL RETROGRADE-AMNESIA - CONTRASTING EXAMPLES OF EPISODIC MEMORY LOSS, Philosophical transactions-Royal Society of London. Biological sciences, 352(1362), 1997, pp. 1747-1754
We studied 11 patients with transient global amnesia (TGA) and ten pat
ients with functional retrograde amnesia (FRA). Patients with TGA had
a uniform clinical picture: a severe, relatively isolated amnesic synd
rome that started suddenly, persisted for 4-12 h, and then gradually i
mproved to essentially normal over the next 12-24 h. During the episod
e, the patients had severe anterograde amnesia for verbal and non-verb
al material and retrograde amnesia that typically covered at least two
decades. Thirty hours to 42 days after the episode, the patients had
recovered completely and performed normally on tests of anterograde an
d retrograde amnesia. By contrast, patients with FRA had a sudden onse
t of memory problems that were characterized by severe retrograde amne
sia without associated anterograde amnesia and with a clinical present
ation that otherwise varied considerably. The episodes persisted from
several weeks to more than two years, and some of the patients had not
recovered at the time of our last contact with them. The uniform clin
ical picture of TGA and the variable clinical picture of FRA presumabl
y reflect their respective neurologic ('organic') and psychogenic ('no
n-organic') aetiologies.