Apparently 2% of humans have time-space synethesia...

[Telarus]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18723-time-lords-discovered-in-california.html

Time Lords walk among us. Two per cent of readers may be surprised to discover that they are members of an elite group with the power to perceive the geography of time.

Sci-fi fans – Anglophile ones, at least – know that the coolest aliens in the universe are Time Lords: time-travelling humanoids with the ability to understand and perceive events throughout time and space. Now it seems that people with a newly described condition have a similar, albeit lesser ability: they experience time as a spatial construct.

Synaesthesia is the condition in which the senses are mixed, so that a sound or a number has a colour, for example. In one version, the sense of touch evokes emotions.

To those variants we can now add time-space synaesthesia.
I see... time

"In general, these individuals perceive months of the year in circular shapes, usually just as an image inside their mind's eye," says David Brang of the department of psychology at the University of California, San Diego.

"These calendars occur in almost any possible shape, and many of the synaesthetes actually experience the calendar projected out into the real world."

One of Brang's subjects was able to see the year as a circular ring surrounding her body. The "ring" rotated clockwise throughout the year so that the current month was always inside her chest with the previous month right in front of her chest.
Regenerating patterns

Brang and colleagues recruited 183 students and asked them to visualise the months of the year and construct this representation on a computer screen. Four months later the students were shown a blank screen and asked to select a position for each of the months. They were prompted with a cue month – a randomly selected month placed as a dot in the location where the student had originally placed it.

Uncannily, four of the 183 students were found to be time-space synaesthetes when they placed their months in a distinct spatial array – such as a circle – that was consistent over the trials.

A second test compared how well time-space synaesthetes and ordinary humans could memorise an unfamiliar spatial calendar and reproduce it. Time-space synaesthetes turned out to have much better recall than the time-blind majority.

Brang suspects that time-space synaesthesia happens when the neural processes underlying spatial processing are unusually active. "This enhanced processing would generalise to other functions of spatial processing – mental rotation, map navigation, spatial manipulation," he says.

Brang did not speculate on whether time-space synaesthetes could regenerate, or if they have two hearts: both key characteristics of Time Lords.

Journal reference: Consciousness and Cognition, DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2010.01.003

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This has sparked some serious curiosity, and an urge to find references to these types of mind phenomena in occulted sources (Zen/Sufi/A.:A.:/etc, etc) and draw some lines around these Starbuck's Pebbles.

I know that states like these can be induced and practiced by finding the right trigger and manipulating your set and setting. More thoughts later.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Wow, everything about almost every article on synesthesia irritates the living shit out of me, and this one took it to a new level of irritation with this quote:

A second test compared how well time-space synaesthetes and ordinary humans could memorise an unfamiliar spatial calendar and reproduce it. Time-space synaesthetes turned out to have much better recall than the time-blind majority.

Most people have some level of synesthesia. Using the terms "synaesthetes" pitted against the term "ordinary humans" fucking bugs the piss out of me.

[Cain]

They should use the words "time-lords" and "assistants" in their place.

Also, are we entirely sure this isn't an April Fool's article?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

They should use the words "time-lords" and "assistants" in their place.

Also, are we entirely sure this isn't an April Fool's article?

OSHI- 

Yes, they should use "Time-Lords" and "Assistants". That would make it utterly lovely.

Also, I love how our civilization has reached a place where we must doubt all information on a certain day of the year. This, if anything, really is a brilliant mindfuck. O GOD IS ANYTHING TRUE TODAY?

[Cramulus]

Abnormal psychology is only really capable of describing things in terms of difference from the norm. I agree that turning a status into a noun is sort of dehumanizing (I'd much rather be a "person with cancer" than a "cancer patient", for example. Roo roo e-prime!). But the word "normal" in psych research is talking about statistical normality, which seems fairly innocuous. They're not saying that people with synesthesia are mutant freaks, they're pointing out that they are statistically abnormal.

[Cain]

It's good practice.  The only problem is getting people to try it on the other 364 days.

Also, I found this article from last year which has some additional details (though not too scientific, since it is the BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8248589.stm

[Jasper]

It actually makes a bit of sense, because aren't space and time the same "thing"?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

It actually makes a bit of sense, because aren't space and time the same "thing"?

That probably depends on who you believe... 

[LMNO]

Most people have some level of synesthesia.

Sorry, I just have to...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Most people have some level of synesthesia.

Sorry, I just have to...

Oh fucking hell. I have no idea, some articles I ran into a couple years ago. I am a synaesthete across several areas including time, and I don't think it's anywhere near as rare as they make it out to be, and I've seen research that supported its commonality. I don't think it is special at all.

[Freeky]

OMG YOU GUISE I AM TOTALLY IN THAT 2 PRESENT! I KNO CUZ NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME! IT ALL MAKES SENSE IM A TIEM LORD.






I couldn't help myself... Sorry everyone.

[LMNO]

Hey, I apologized, right?  I mean, I've never come across the idea that everyone is somewhat synesthesic.  Is it considered common knowledge?

[Cain]

Hey, I apologized, right?  I mean, I've never come across the idea that everyone is somewhat synesthesic.  Is it considered common knowledge?

The BCC article I linked to suggests it is quite common, and that most people know someone with synesthesia.

[LMNO]

Hey, I apologized, right?  I mean, I've never come across the idea that everyone is somewhat synesthesic.  Is it considered common knowledge?

The BCC article I linked to suggests it is quite common, and that most people know someone with synesthesia.

Ah, so it does.

I continue with my apologies, and will shut up now.


LMNO
-one of the pitiful minorities without any kind of synesthesia whatsoever.

[Telarus]

I don't think synaesthesia is hard-wired in any way. We keep discovering that the brain is more plastic than our previous models recognized. I think that synaesthesia happens when the brain stumbles upon a novel way of processing incoming sense-data that leads to a more efficient model of the environment (even if some of the filtering/categorizing uses "goblin logic/Lawof5s"), and that it becomes a practiced subconscious habit. I do think that genetics/environment will have an effect on how probably you are to develop distinct recognizable symptoms of synaesthesia, but I think most people's subconscious mind uses dream-logic connections to filter and categorize quickly. Synaesthesia appears to be an intrusion of this process into conscious awareness. It's hitting your 1st circuit awareness with signals that don't make sense in the normal 3rd circuit symbol driven narrative.


WHAT? WORDS CANT HAVE COLORS. HUGS DON'T TASTE LIKE CHOCOLATE>!!!!one!11!

I've had very vivid hallucinations of moments of time in Coin-like shapes appearing from out of my chest (the "NOW") after some long breathwork meditations (note, I had recently read about the Aymara people of Peru, and how their language and visual/spacial representation of time differs from most of the West and had read Peter Carrol's Imaginary Time theory before that), and I could distinctly 'feel' that there were moments of time behind/collapsed that were waiting unseen on the verge of emergence.... oddly enough, the past=in front of us / future = behind us lines up with the synaesthesia case presented (the ring of months coming from her chest) and lines up with the Makyo (Zen hallucination) that I experienced.