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Transient Global Amnesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_global_amnesia is a neurological term used by doctors to describe a temporary brain condition during which the patient  cannot remember anything that happened during a time period but otherwise functions normally as any  other healthy person in conversation, motor skills, and other mental tasks. The time period usually  last hours and then spontaneously clears up with no known lasting effects. Very little is known  about TGA except that it happens to people mysteriously because of our lack of knowledge  of our brain. I recently experience such an episode lasting only five to six minutes.

I drive to the health facility in the community center ofour town for physical exercise three times a week taking a fix route which I know by heart. About two months ago, on one of these trips  I remember take a familiar turn ¼ way into the trip. Then the next thing I became aware of (some five to six minutes  later judging by the distance traveled) is that I am driving in a different part of our town that has  nothing to do with my usual route to the community center and in fact in a different direction. I have absolutely no idea or recollection as to how or why I find myself there. If I am driving on auto-pilot due to the familiar route, then I should not have come to this different part of the town  way out from my usual route. I was apparently functioning normal since I did not get into any  driving accident.Yet I have no idea why I found myself there. Following visits to my doctor and a neurologist, I had MRI, Ultrasonic, and EEG scans, and various motor and cognitive tests which I passed all with normal results. Medicine really has no explanation except telling me to watch out if such episode recurs. It is not even sure that I had a TGA episode since such event usually last hours instead of minutes as in my case. An everyday common language conjecture is somehow I had a blockage in my memory and storage connection which cured itself after a few minutes.

Tales of TGA abound once you become aware of the term. You find easily among your friends and acquaintances that they also had such experiences. There are even tales that a dentist performed a successful oral surgery without remembering it. New York Times had a recent article, written by a classmate of my daughter, about it http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/magazine/a-brief-vacation-from-myself.html. However, my case is far less severe. During the past two months I attended and understood a very advanced technical seminar and had intelligent discussion on professional subject with colleagues routinely.  I am curios among Chinese  science net readers if this term is known in China and what do people do about it.