‘A Big, Black Hole’: Katie Couric Opens Up About the Day Her Memory Vanished

Journalist Katie Couric recently shared her experience of sudden memory loss that persisted for several hours during a recent trip to Colorado. Doctors diagnosed the episode as transient global amnesia, a temporary condition that stops new memories from forming for a short period of time.

“It was Saturday, June 27, 2026,” Couric wrote in a Substack post. “But when I was asked the month, the year, and who was president, I got them wrong. I wasn’t sure of the month. I thought it was 2024. And I believed Joe Biden was president.”

Couric, who is 69, wrote that she was briefly hospitalized after losing memory of much of that day while attending the Aspen Ideas Festival. She said she remembers the day until “about noon,” but everything through at least 7 p.m. remains “a big, black hole.”

Couric appeared on two panels that afternoon, but has no recollection of either discussion or what happened afterward. Her husband noticed that she seemed weak and dizzy after her final appearance and took her to the hospital. An MRI showed no evidence of a stroke and she subsequently was diagnosed with transient global amnesia.

Transient global amnesia is a temporary problem in which a person can’t recall recent events. Episodes often come on suddenly, usually in middle-age or older adults. The person is awake, alert, and able to think clearly in most ways, but can’t form new memories for several hours.

“One way to think about transient global amnesia is as a temporary power outage affecting only the brain’s memory center,” said vascular neurologist Laura Stein, MD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

“The rest of the brain continues to function normally, which is why patients remain awake, alert, and able to carry out complex activities despite being unable to form new memories,” Stein told MedPage Today. “When the power comes back on, memory function returns to normal, but the period of the outage itself is never fully recovered, leaving a gap in memory for the event.”

A common sign of transient global amnesia is repeated questioning. A person may ask the same questions over and over — “How did I get here?” or “What happened?” — even when the questions have just been answered.

“Fortunately, transient global amnesia is considered a benign and self-limited condition,” Stein noted.

At the outset, transient global amnesia can look like other disorders. Differential diagnoses include transient epileptic amnesia, cerebrovascular events, and migraine-associated phenomena.

“Any sudden loss of memory or abrupt change in neurologic function warrants immediate medical attention,” Stein pointed out. “Conditions such as stroke, seizure, and other neurologic emergencies can initially resemble transient global amnesia, making prompt evaluation essential to ensure that more serious causes are not missed.”

What causes transient global amnesia is unclear. Some episodes are preceded by physical shock, psychological stress, or extreme exertion. Case reports have linked very high altitudes with transient global amnesia, and a retrospective study indicated it was more prevalent in Colorado than other places.

Recent research has suggested that disruptions in the limbic circuit may explain what happens during a transient global amnesia event. Other studies have identified hippocampal lesions that don’t appear immediately but develop 1 to 2 days after an episode of transient global amnesia.

Most patients experience a single event, but 3% to 24% have recurrences. Recurrence has been tied to an earlier age when the initial episode occurred, a higher prevalence of personal and family history of migraine, and other factors.

“Although transient global amnesia can be frightening for patients and their families to experience, from a neurologist’s perspective, it is often one of the most reassuring diagnoses to make,” Stein noted.

“The hallmark of transient global amnesia is that memory function returns to normal, and we expect patients to resume their usual activities without long-term neurologic consequences,” she said.