Transient global amnesia: evidence for extensive, temporally graded retrograde amnesia.

We gave six patients with transient global amnesia (TGA) neuropsychological tests during and after their episodes. During TGA, all patients had severe anterograde amnesia for verbal and nonverbal material and a patchy but temporally graded retrograde amnesia for personal and public events dating back to at least 1960. In addition, they were unusually passive during TGA, had impaired ability to copy a complex figure, and possibly had mild impairment of confrontation naming. All exhibited complete recovery of memory and other cognitive abilities after the episode. There are similarities between the transient amnesia of patients with TGA and the chronic amnesia of patients with presumed bilateral damage to the medial temporal region or the diencephalic midline.