Gil R, Abdul-Samad F, Mathis S, Neau J-P
Service de neurologie, hôpital Jean-Bernard, CHU de Poitiers, université de Poitiers, 2 rue de la Milétrie, Poitiers, France.
Rev Neurol (Paris). 2010 Aug-Sep;166(8-9):699-703. doi: 10.1016/j.neurol.2010.01.002. Epub 2010 Mar 10.
The first descriptions of transient global amnesia (TGA) were made in 1956 and 1958. Considering the large number of TGA reported since these original descriptions, it is not conceivable that TGA arose as a new entity in the mid-20th century. Many authors thus tried to understand why it had not been described by the authors of the late 19th and early 20th century. It was considered that TGA "was immersed in the literature on psychogenic amnesia" (Hodges, 1991) and particularly hysterical amnesia. But, can we consider that confusion between transient global amnesia and psychogenic amnesia truly existed?
The book of Paul Sollier, a student of Charcot and Ball, emphasizes the memory problems that were discussed in the second part of the 19th century.
The author presents a clear differentiation between hysterical amnesia and amnesia triggered by an emotional shock. The cases he proposed include characteristic descriptions of transient global amnesia observed after a violent emotional shock. Sollier, like Ball and his student Rouillard, also considered transient amnesias such as post-traumatic amnesias occurring after mild head trauma. The triggering role was assigned to the "moral emotion" that can provoke a modification of the encephalic circulation.
While TGA was not yet recognized as an entity, some French neurologists of the 19th century reported cases of temporary amnesias different from hysterical amnesia and occurring after an emotional shock, which were the first observations of the entity later recognized as TGA.
