July 18, 2013 13:00 — 2 Comments
Global Transient Amnesia: Florida-born Man Wakes from Unconciousness Fluent in Only Swedish
Michael Boatwright, a Florida-born military veteran, woke up in a hotel room with the ability to speak only Swedish with no recollection of details from his life. Said to suffer from global transient amnesia, a sudden occurence of memory loss that cannot be linked to any common neurological condition, Boatwright’s story was recently featured on ABC News’ Nightline. See video below.
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It is a sort of conversion reaction, I believe.
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It is not clear if this gentleman had a TIA, which affected not only his speech area, but definitely his hippocampus and Amygdaloid complex. If it comes back, it was probably a TIA; if not, he might have infarcted the area. We do see the disappearance of second language after a stroke in our clinical practice.
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