Transient Epileptic Amnesia: A Mystery of Human Memory, Are There Lessons to be Learned?

Transient epileptic amnesia (TEA) may be suspected in patients meeting all of the following criteria: 1) History of recurrent witnessed episodes of transient amnesia; 2) Cognitive functions, excluding memory, judged to be intact during typical episodes by a reliable witness; 3) Documented epilepsy. However, patients who lack a documented diagnosis of epilepsy, may meet the two previous criteria. Such rare and atypical cases, as the one described below, require high clinical suspicion for epilepsy, as well as TEA. Here we describe a rather intriguing case of TEA.