A common symptom of<unk>  is confusion. The most prominent symptom of<unk>  <unk>  is a loss of memory of the present time. As a result, patients are often unaware of their condition and may behave as if they are going about their regular lives. This can cause complications if patients are confined to a hospital and may lead to agitation, distress and anxiety. Many patients report feeling as though they were being "held prisoner" and being prevented from carrying on with their daily lives. Other symptoms include agitation, confusion, disorientation, and restlessness. Patients also often display behavioral disturbances. Patients may shout, swear and behave in a disinhibited fashion. There have been cases in which patients who do not recognize anyone will ask for family members or acquaintances that they have not seen in years. Some patients exhibit childlike behavior. Other patients show uncharacteristically quiet, friendly and loving behavior. Although this behavior may seem less threatening because of its lack of aggressiveness, it may be equally worrisome.<unk>  patients are often unaware of their surroundings and will ask questions repeatedly. Patients may also have a tendency to wander off, which can be a major concern in those who have suffered additional injuries at the time of trauma, such as injured limbs, as it may lead to the worsening of these secondary injuries. Attention Attention is a cognitive resource that contributes to many mental functions. The ability to engage attention requires a certain level of conscious awareness, arousal and concentration, all mechanisms that are generally impaired by<unk>  brain injury. The involvement of attention in such a vast array of cognitive processes has led to the suggestion that attentional deficit may act as an underlying factor in the range of cognitive deficits observed in patients experiencing<unk>  <unk> . Attention has been regarded as an important factor in the healthy functioning of encoding, verbal comprehension and new learning. Automatic attention processes (such as counting forwards) are recovered before simple memory skills (such as a recognition test of verbal material) in individuals with mild to moderate brain injury. This implies that the recovery of attentional ability precedes the progression of memory recovery after injury, helping to pave the way to regain ability for new learning. In terms of more severe brain injuries, this automatic attention task performance recovers before disorientation completely resolves. One of the weaknesses of the method most often used in assessing<unk> , the Galveston Orientation and Amnesia Test (GOAT), is that it does not include any assessment of attention, which could help give a better indication of potential for recovery. By omitting attention, the test is omitting some crucial aspects of a person's cognitive capabilities. In addition, assessing attention during the period of<unk>  may help determine whether the patient is still in a state of<unk>  or if they are suffering from a more permanent form of memory deficit. In patients with mild TBI, the damage consists primarily of diffuse axonal injury (widespread damage to white matter) without any focal damage (damage to specific areas). Sometimes, injury of the brainstem was also observed. In these cases, there is likely the presence of an attentional deficit without a true amnesiac state. In more severely brain-damaged individuals, the damage to the temporal lobes and the frontal lobes serves as good indication that amnesia will result. Patients suffering from more chronic forms of memory impairment showed poor performance when tested with<unk>  scales, making differentiation between the two types of memory impairment very difficult.<unk>  patients exhibit poor simple reaction time, reduced information processing speed and reduced verbal fluency, which are all attentional deficits that could be used to distinguish these patients from those suffering from more severe and permanent memory problems. Communication skills The effects of<unk>  on communication skills were studied using the Revised Edinburgh Functional Communication Profile (REFCP), which measures both linguistic elements (related to speech) and pragmatic elements (related to body language and other non-verbal communication skills).<unk>  has effects on memory, perception and attention, which are all important for communication. Patients showed mild deficits in verbal communication skills, and moderate to severe deficits in nonverbal communication skills such as maintaining eye contact, initiating greetings, and responding appropriately. Also, a negative correlation was found between the duration of a patient's episode of<unk>  and his REFCP score; the longer the<unk>  episode, the more severe the deficit in non-linguistic pragmatic skills. However, the small sample size of this study (only 10 males) means that the results must be interpreted with caution, as they may not generalize to larger samples or to the population at large.
Post-traumatic amnesia
Excited delirium
Drug-induced amnesia
Childhood amnesia
Transient global amnesia
Memory distrust syndrome
Psychogenic amnesia
Emergence delirium