A 54-year-old woman showed up in the emergency room at Georgetown
University Hospital with her husband, unable to remember the past 24
hours. Her newer memories were hazy, too. One thing she did recall: Her
amnesia had started right after having sex with her husband just an hour
before.
While sex can be forgettable or mind-blowing, for some
people, it can quite literally be both at the same time. The woman,
whose case was reported in the September issue of The Journal of
Emergency Medicine, was experiencing transient global amnesia, a rare condition in which memory suddenly, temporarily, disappears.
People
with transient global amnesia suffer no side effects, and the memory
problems usually reverse themselves in the span of a few hours. It's a
rare condition, affecting only about 3 to 5 people per 100,000 each
year. But what makes transient global amnesia so eerie is that
researchers aren't sure what causes it, or why patients remain otherwise
chatty and alert while missing large chunks of their memories.
"We don't know very much about the cause," said Sebastian Ameriso, a neurologist at the Institute for Neurological Research
in Buenos Aires, who was not involved in the 54-year-old woman's case.
"It causes a lot of alarm, but this is not a stroke or an event that
causes damage to the brain. It's almost always very benign."
Mind-erasing activities
Sex can trigger transient global amnesia, as can other physically strenuous activities. People in their 50s and 60s are the most likely to experience an episode, but strangely, most people with transient global amnesia have it only once. In most cases, the amnesia is anterograde, meaning people have trouble forming new memories. Sometimes, people also experience transient retrograde amnesia, forgetting some portion of their previous memories. In the case of the 54-year-old woman at the Washington, D.C., hospital, the last day was a fog, and she had been forgetful and confused since having sex.
Sex can trigger transient global amnesia, as can other physically strenuous activities. People in their 50s and 60s are the most likely to experience an episode, but strangely, most people with transient global amnesia have it only once. In most cases, the amnesia is anterograde, meaning people have trouble forming new memories. Sometimes, people also experience transient retrograde amnesia, forgetting some portion of their previous memories. In the case of the 54-year-old woman at the Washington, D.C., hospital, the last day was a fog, and she had been forgetful and confused since having sex.
As with most patients, the woman's brain scans using magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) showed nothing unusual and no
damage to the brain. By the time she left the emergency room, her
symptoms were almost gone.
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