Recovery of Long-Term Anterograde Amnesia, but Not Retrograde Amnesia, after Initiation of an Anti-Epileptic Drug in a Case of Transient Epileptic Amnesia

Abstract

Transient epileptic amnesia (TEA) is characterised by recurrent brief episodes of amnesia and atypical amnesic symptoms, known as long-term anterograde amnesia and dense retrograde amnesia. It has been proposed that an antiepileptic drug (AED) can prevent not only epileptiform activity, but also accelerated forgetting. However, there have been no reports regarding the effects of such drugs on retrograde amnesia. We found that an AED prevented accelerated forgetting, but not dense retrograde amnesia, suggesting that accelerated forgetting in TEA was treatable, but retrograde amnesia was an irreversible process.

Keywords:

• Accelerated forgetting
• Memory consolidation
• Temporal lobe epilepsy

Acknowledgments

We thank the patient and his wife for their cooperation. We thank the reviewers for their many helpful comments. A.M. was supported by a Chuo University Grant for Special Research. A.M. and M.K. were supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI).