Transient Epileptic Amnesia With Amygdala Enlargement Presenting to a Dementia Clinic.

Abstract

Transient epileptic amnesia (TEA) is a distinct syndrome of late-onset limbic epilepsy of unknown cause, typically occurring in old age. It is an important cause of memory loss in older people because it could be treatable. However, it is often mistaken for neurodegenerative disease, transient global amnesia (TGA), cerebrovascular disease, and functional amnesia because amnesia is the only manifestation in some patients, unaccompanied by symptoms such as olfactory hallucination, motor automatisms, or brief unresponsiveness.1 In some patients with TEA, suspected causative abnormalities are detected by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These most commonly involve the mesial temporal lobes,2 which might provide some hints to clinicians in dementia clinics for diagnosing TEA. Here, we report the case of a patient with TEA accompanied by amygdala enlargement who presented to a dementia clinic.