Ictal Neuropsychological Assessment in a Patient with Transient Global Amnesia
A 62-year-old man was brought to the hospital with sudden memory loss and abnormal behaviors. He remembered having breakfast with his family members at 8 am on that day but didn’t what food he ate. He continuously asked questions about where he was while calling with his wife at noon, what he was doing and what clothes he wore. And as he couldn’t remember what happened in the morning, he was brought to the hospital with his family members. On the way into the hospital, he repeatedly asked why they were going to hospital, and why they were together with him.\nWhen hospitalized, he couldn’t remember the route between the hospital and his house or the accompanying persons, and how to get to the hospital. He didn’t have any diseases such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia or migraine and didn’t drink or smoke. He had had no history of any external wound or infection. His vital signs were normal and there was nothing wrong in his physical examination. Following the neurological examination, his consciousness was proved clear. There were no problems in motor system, sensory system and cranial nervous.\nFour hours after the onset of the disease, Korean version of mini-mental state examination (K-MMSE) and Seoul Neuropsychological Screening Battery (SNSB) tests were carried out. He has master’s degree. He got 27 score in K-MMSE losing each point in time orientation, place orientation and delayed recall test.\nSNSB showed the low score in the immediate recall, delayed recall and recognition of verbal and visual memory. And it showed that there were problems in semantic word fluency and color word stroop test (). Diffusion-weighted MRI performed on the day of the onset of the disease showed the high signal abnormalities in the bilateral hippocampus (). The next day he remembered he was hospitalized but didn’t remember the fact that he went through the neuropsychological tests and brain MRI.