30-Year Amnesia: How the Brain Suddenly Remembers

Although amnesia is a clichéd plot device for mystery novels and soap operas, this type of global amnesia — in which a person forgets everything about his or her life, typically called a fugue state — is very rare, said Jason Brandt, a neuropsychologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, who was not involved in Latulip's care. "These cases of people disappearing for 30 years and then waking up and coming to —these are very rare," Brandt told Live Science.