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The symptoms vary depending on which part of the brain is affected. Usually, the symptoms come on suddenly but they can come on during sleep so that you wake with them. Some patients have several transient ischaemic attacks in a period of a few hours, days or weeks.

Common symptoms include:

Muscle weakness or paralysis
This can affect any part of the body but most commonly affects one hand, arm or leg, or the face. Quite often the arm and leg are affected on one side. Even if the arm or leg is not weak people sometimes have difficulty controlling them. If a blood vessel on the left side of the brain becomes blocked, this will normally cause weakness on the right side of the body and a blockage on the right side of the brain will cause weakness on the left side of the body.

Loss of sensation
Some people find that the feeling in part of their body is altered, with numbness or pins and needles.

Difficulty with speech
Transient ischaemic attacks can cause slurred speech (this is called dysarthria) or sometimes difficulties in finding the right words (this is called dysphasia). They can also cause difficulties in reading (dyslexia) and writing. Very occasionally, people have difficulties understanding speech and find it is almost like listening to a foreign language.

Visual symptoms
Transient ischaemic attacks can cause double vision (diplopia) or quite commonly loss of vision to one side, so that the person cannot see anything to the left or the right side with either eye (hemianopia). Some people with transient ischaemic attacks lose vision in one eye - the doctors call this amaurosis fugax. It can be difficult to tell the difference between hemianopia and amaurosis fugax unless the person closes one eye during the attack to see whether one or both eyes are affected.

Dizziness
Transient ischaemic attacks can cause a feeling of spinning called vertigo. This is sometimes linked with nausea and vomiting.

Transient ischaemic attacks are not usually painful and very rarely cause loss of consciousness.