A person experiencing a TEA episode has very little short-term memory, so that there is profound difficulty remembering events in the past few minutes (anterograde<unk> , or of events in the hours before the onset of the attack, and even memories of important events in recent years may not be accessible during the amnestic event (retrograde<unk> . Some people report short-lived retrograde<unk>  so deep that they do not recognize their home or family members, though personal identity is preserved. The amnestic attack has a sudden onset. Three-fourths of cases are reported upon awakening. In attacks that begin when an individual is fully alert, olfactory hallucinations or a "strange taste" or nausea have been reported. Somewhat less than half the cases include olfactory or gustatory hallucinations, and slightly more than a third involve motor automatisms. A quarter of attacks involve a brief period of unresponsiveness. Frequently, however, there is no warning. During the attack the person's cognitive functions are not generally impaired; perception, communication, attention are normal for most of the duration of the event. In half the cases reported, behavior includes repetitive questioning to attempt to orient experience as the brain fails to lay down new memories or recall a range of recent experiences. The website of the UK-based organization The Impairment of Memory in Epilepsy (TIME) describes an attack this way: Attacks typically last 20 to 60 minutes. Some attacks may be less than five minutes in duration. Much longer attacks have been reported; in the 2007 study of 50 TEA cases, one lasted four days and one lasted two days. Such unusual presentations "may be due to ongoing seizure activity (non-convulsive status<unk> us) or persistent post-ictal dysfunction of memory-related brain structures." As the<unk>  resolves, the person may recall very little about it, although some memory may be retained of the fact of an episode. Of greater consequence than this brief gap are three common persistent memory complaints among people who have experienced TEA: difficulty recalling knowledge recently gained (accelerated forgetting); difficulty recalling events in one's personal life over a period of decades (autobiographical<unk> ; and difficulty with spatial memory, recalling routes or places and the navigational cues that are associated with them (topographical<unk> , discussed below.
Transient epileptic amnesia
Excited delirium
Emergence delirium
Fatal insomnia
Childhood amnesia
Post-stroke depression
Transient global amnesia
Drug-induced amnesia