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.
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:
QuoteA 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.
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?
Quote from: Cain on April 01, 2010, 06:06:13 PM
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- :lulz:
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?
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.
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
It actually makes a bit of sense, because aren't space and time the same "thing"?
Quote from: Sigmatic on April 01, 2010, 06:27:29 PM
It actually makes a bit of sense, because aren't space and time the same "thing"?
That probably depends on who you believe... :fnord:
Quote from: Calamity Nigel on April 01, 2010, 06:02:56 PM
Most people have some level of synesthesia.
Sorry, I just have to...
:cn:
Quote from: LMNO on April 01, 2010, 07:16:15 PM
Quote from: Calamity Nigel on April 01, 2010, 06:02:56 PM
Most people have some level of synesthesia.
Sorry, I just have to...
:cn:
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.
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.
Hey, I apologized, right? I mean, I've never come across the idea that everyone is somewhat synesthesic. Is it considered common knowledge?
Quote from: LMNO on April 01, 2010, 07:22:38 PM
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.
Quote from: Cain on April 01, 2010, 07:24:43 PM
Quote from: LMNO on April 01, 2010, 07:22:38 PM
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.
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.
ehh it's not that common. Most research pegs it at less than 5% of the population. I guess 1 out of 20 is fairly common, but hardly normal.
Most people know at least 20 people though, right?
FWIW I can't visualize the past as "behind" me or the future as "ahead" of me. it's more like a field with areas I haven't been to. That's actually a bad description. More like a room? Only things move all the time.
That makes it only about half as common as left-handedness. Rare, but not "OMFG freak!" rare.
:cry: I feel so worthless and un-special... :emo:
you'll just have to get by on your other statistical abnormalities.
:lmnuendo:
Luckily my senses seem to work properly. Glad I am not one of those freaks.
Quote from: rygD on April 01, 2010, 08:12:45 PM
Luckily my senses seem to work properly. Glad I am not one of those freaks.
I know, right? I can't imagine what it would be like to see a blue car and have my senses tell me it's bacon, or the number 6, every single time. How inconvenient!
:troll:
IIRC the author of This Is Your Brain on Music claims all infants have something like synaesthesia in that the brain structures involved in perception are as yet undifferentiated. So apparently infants live in a psychedelic wonderland.
/tangent, sorta
Quote from: Sigmatic on April 01, 2010, 06:27:29 PM
It actually makes a bit of sense, because aren't space and time the same "thing"?
I wouldn't say so, partly because our minds exist in time but not space. And isn't is considered kinda like an extra dimension on top of the three we can physically perceive?
This one, I can handle: No, space and time are considered space-time. Einstein figured that one out.
Also "Minds exist in time not space"? Descartes called, wants his duality back.
Vivian Jaffe: Have you ever transcended space and time?
Albert Markovski: Yes. No. Uh, time, not space... No, I don't know what you're talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp0vr1n25u4
Quote from: Chryselephantine Shavenwolf on April 01, 2010, 08:38:46 PM
IIRC the author of This Is Your Brain on Music claims all infants have something like synaesthesia in that the brain structures involved in perception are as yet undifferentiated. So apparently infants live in a psychedelic wonderland.
I'm fairly sure I've heard that claim somewhere else, too. Might've even been a science news website.
Quote from: LMNO on April 01, 2010, 08:49:13 PM
This one, I can handle: No, space and time are considered space-time. Einstein figured that one out.
Also "Minds exist in time not space"? Descartes called, wants his duality back.
Are you suggesting Hover Cat is
mired in Cartesian Dualism?
Quote from: Telarus on April 01, 2010, 05:33:02 PM
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.
Quote
Some hackers report experiencing strong synesthetic imagery when in hack mode; interestingly, independent reports from multiple sources suggest that there are common features to the experience. In particular, the dominant colors of this subjective cyberspace are often gray and silver, and the imagery often involves constellations of marching dots, elaborate shifting patterns of lines and angles, or moire patterns.
Source: http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/cyberspace.html
I suspect that synesthesia may be under-reported. Like other elements of our BIP, unless it is brought to our attention we generally are unaware of it.
Quote from: LMNO on April 01, 2010, 08:49:13 PM
Also "Minds exist in time not space"? Descartes called, wants his duality back.
That's actually materialism as well. Minds are not something that exists in space (I can't touch yours or anyone else's directly, can I?), but that doesn't mean it's not part of the brain (imo, anyway).
I was also of the understanding that time and space were intertwined, but not exactly the same thing. Apparently I was wrong, but the more you know...
I been wishing for synesthesia for YEARS.
I know of at least two people who frequent/used to frequent PD that have some sort of synesthesia. It's probably more common than reported on, since, you know, most synesthetes start out thinking everyone senses the world the way they do and only catch on later.
This temporal-spacial synesthesia is pretty cool.
Interestingly, it implies that either time is a "sense" in the brain the same way "taste" and "smell" are senses, OR that many kinds of perception can intermix with other kinds of perception.
Quote from: Kai on April 01, 2010, 10:53:59 PM
I been wishing for synesthesia for YEARS.
I know of at least two people who frequent/used to frequent PD that have some sort of synesthesia. It's probably more common than reported on, since, you know, most synesthetes start out thinking everyone senses the world the way they do and only catch on later.
This temporal-spacial synesthesia is pretty cool.
It's really not that interesting, other than perhaps as a mnemonic device.
I think unless you have some kind of major synesthesia going on, it's not going to impact your life at all. Other than being able to look at the letter A and being able to say "Oh, that would be the color red," for example.
Quote from: Calamity Nigel on April 01, 2010, 11:13:02 PM
Quote from: Kai on April 01, 2010, 10:53:59 PM
I been wishing for synesthesia for YEARS.
I know of at least two people who frequent/used to frequent PD that have some sort of synesthesia. It's probably more common than reported on, since, you know, most synesthetes start out thinking everyone senses the world the way they do and only catch on later.
This temporal-spacial synesthesia is pretty cool.
It's really not that interesting, other than perhaps as a mnemonic device.
I think it's cool. I think it's cool that people can have such profoundly different experiences of perceiving reality at the fundamental level.
LMNO I don't have synaesthesia either. Maybe a littlebit with music and tactile sensation. But that could be just metaphor. On the other hand I listen almost exclusively to electronic music so there usually aren't many tactile sensations involved in producing it. At least, when tagging separate tracks my music collection by genre/feel, I come up with descriptions as "dust" or "mmmmmmm". But the concepts linked are always (for me) in a meaningful associative way, which afaik is not usually the case with synaesthesia, the colour orange usually does not taste like carrot or smell like citrus. Regardless, I should probably continue tagging my music collection in that fashion, because it works. This was my old HD, which I lost, and I most definitely remember exactly what those two tags were "about".
And about the space/time continuum thing. While it is "one thing" in Einstein's theory, the time-dimension is still profoundly different from the regular three space dimensions. At least, X Y and Z are very similar in the sense that you can rotate in them and objects remain the same size. For the time dimension, not so much. It's reversed, only goes one way and generally does not play like the others. I mean, that was part of Einstein's discovery of relativity, that he somehow managed to come up with a bunch of formulas that showed that in some way you can interpret time as playing like the others and model them into one continuum. But that doesn't mean it "is" the same thing. Also, regular space dimensions do not have notions such as the Arrow of Time or causality. Just because physicists want a grand unifying theory real bad :)