
Humans Who See Time (2010) - georgecmu
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/04/02/the-rare-humans-who-see-time-have-amazing-memories/#.V1uC7-bpFav.facebook
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Artlav
I wonder if that can even be called synesthesia. Sounds more like how visual-
oriented people would think of time.

For me, it's kind of an ellipse in front. The spring is on the right, the fall
is on the left, the summer is on the top, and winter below. When i think of a
date, i look at where that date is located. And vice-versa, the events are
located somewhere, and looking at them gives me the date.

Kind of like this
[http://i.imgur.com/7PJMf9O.png](http://i.imgur.com/7PJMf9O.png)

I later worked out a way to tell the day of the week by a date based on this.

Every month is marked depending on the offset of it's first day from january's
(assuming january starts on thursday, which is 0). For me it's | - -/ \--|
kind of symbol marks, on one side or the other of the ellipse, which denotes
the 0, 1, 2 and 3 days off.

Next is an image like that that you need to memorize:
[http://i.imgur.com/dpfn2lX.png](http://i.imgur.com/dpfn2lX.png) \- a month on
a calendar page, monday thru sunday, with thursday in the center. 1, 8, 15,
22, 29 are the centreline of thursdays.

2016 starts on friday, the offset of the year is +1, and it's a leap year, so
every month after feburary gets another +1.

Today is June 12th, 2016.

June is -3 (look at the year ellipse).

12th is -3 (look at the image #2 ).

2016 is +1 and leap year is +1 (have to keep in mind).

Sum it up, you get -3-3+1+1 = -4, ring it 7 is +3. Add to thursday, and it's
sunday.

Another example: September 13th, 2014.

September is -2.

13th is -2.

2014 is -1.

Add up to -5, ring it 7 to get +2, which is saturday.

It may sound hard, but a few hours of practice would make it automatic,
especially if you are a visual type.

~~~
dri_ft
My mental image of a year is a vertically-reflected version of yours.

~~~
Artlav
I wonder what determines it.

I can remember first thinking about it (around the same age i figured out how
to move my eyes) as a ribbon of days going around in a spiral. Eventually it
settled into the ellipse/rectangle thing i described.

I often felt that the summer is something you climb up to (end of school, exam
season in university, etc), and then after some smooth relaxed sailing you
drop down towards the winter again (no more free time, got to do school and so
on).

However, i can't quite say if that determined the orientation, or the metaphor
came from the orientation.

------
tzs
I've not read the actual paper (paywall) so this could just be a problem with
the reporting about it, but it doesn't sound to me like that test they did on
the 183 people that involved asking them to visualize the months and then
reconstruct that visualization on a computer screen, and then later found that
when asked to do the same thing four months later and were prompted with one
month placed in the same position they had placed it the first time, 4 of the
183 recreated the same layout they did the first time suggests time-space
synesthetes.

I'm not a time-space synesthete, for instance, but if you asked me to
visualize the months and then represent that on a computer screen I would not
just randomly toss the months around. I'd decide on some logical ordering and
arrangement and use that. Ask me again 4 months later, even without prompting
me by pre-placing one of the months where I placed it before, and I'd almost
certainly recreate my original arrangement.

I probably would not choose a spiral, but from what the article quotes it
doesn't sound like it was the shape of the visualizing that the authors
consider to be significant. It was the consistency of the visualization across
trials.

The second test, where they tested how well people could memorize and recall
an unfamiliar spatial calendar seems much better.

------
BjoernKW
I visualize not only discrete amounts of time like months or days as some sort
of circular (or rather elliptic) strip but also pretty much any kind of
sequence of contiguous numbers.

I almost can't believe it's really that uncommon because - from my point of
view - it just makes sense. How would you imagine time or numbers if not in a
visual, spatial manner?

I suppose for humans arranging objects that come after another in a spatial
order that expresses this relation comes pretty naturally, given that we're
very visual creatures and we're used to the 3 dimensions of space we perceive.

------
khedoros
The year's a circle, roughly. December is at 12 o'clock, March is at 9
o'clock, and I move around it in a counter-clockwise direction. September
through December are a little more squished together than the other months.
May through August are a little more spread out.

I thought everyone experienced that, until a thread on Reddit about 4 years
ago (and I still don't think that it's as rare as the title implies).

~~~
ta_donk_gt
Interesting. Mine goes clockwise, with the line between December and January
at 6 o'clock.

Agree I doubt it is really as rare as the article makes it seem.

~~~
eddyl
Mine is the same as yours: a circle with months going clockwise, Jan/Dec at 6
o'clock.

It occurred to me a couple years ago that thinking of the calendar like this
might not be something everyone does. I asked my friend how he thought of it
and he said he saw it as a LINE.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I see the months in a year as a sort of sine wave, with december at the
bottoms and july at the tops. I guess it's like a combination of the linear
and circular view.

~~~
filoeleven
Same here! But when thinking about weekdays, it's just a circle with Sunday at
the bottom. Days themselves fill up vertically...I never realized how much of
a hodge-podge collection of visualizations I've been using.

------
dxhdr
Isn't this mental model of time fairly common? If you don't picture the year
as a circle or donut, what do you think of when considering the year?

~~~
tux3
It's interesting reading all these different ways people have to picture a
year.

I simply don't visualize it, I think of it as an abstract concept and don't
try to put a picture on it. If I had to think of an image the first thing that
would come to my mind is a boring old paper calendar, but that's not something
I would naturally think of.

~~~
nickcano
>I simply don't visualize it, I think of it as an abstract concept and don't
try to put a picture on it.

Right. When I'm asked "what happened in January", I just think back to
January. There's no mental picture or anything; I just select for January.
Typically I'll use some significant event markers and a sort of relativistic
system to remember when things happened (e.g. x happened before y but after z,
and I know y was in February and z was early January). No imagery ever comes
in to play.

This is really tripping me out that so many people think so differently.

~~~
gatesphere
>I just select for January.

So, you have a time-series database model? Because that's pretty cool.
Especially if you're running mentalSQL queries.

SELECT '*' from MEMORIES where MONTH = 'January';

~~~
nickcano
I mean, yeah, that's what I feel like is going on. I think it's more like when
somebody says the word "January", I pick up that it's a tag in many contexts,
one being time, and start picking information associated with that tag. If the
"active context" is time, then I'd start thinking about what happened around
that time, what's coming up next January, etc.

The same happens, for instance, if somebody says "the park"; I don't get a
mental image of the park, I just start thinking about things associated with
it (typically things that happened there).

I can do the whole "visual memory" thing, but it's a conscious process that I
have to focus on, rather than something that comes automatically. That's not
to say my visual memory is bad, just not default.

I always figured this was how nearly everyone thought, but after reading this
thread I'm questioning it now.

EDIT: also there's some kind of search tree balancing going on, I think.
Because sometimes you may ask me what happened in January, I feel like I sort
of mentally go over everything and do a quicksort type of process? But only if
there's a lot of past events that aren't already associated with the January
tag? I don't know it's hard to explain.

------
mbrock
I experience time as a series of revolving problems: painful awkward spring
yields to sweaty sleepy summer yields to deathly gloomy fall which decays into
desolate hostile winter... yet for a week in March one imagines the world
good, a splendid week of hope.

------
rl3
The headline seemed perplexing, but after seeing the article's illustration I
was shocked to realize that's me (sort of).

Whenever I think of time on a scale of at least weeks, the mental picture I
have is circular. The center is always the house I grew up in. Months aren't
represented as just colors, but images: views of the yard surrounding the
house, based on the season a particular month corresponds to. Perspective
changes based on the timescale I'm focusing on.

As a kid I used to picture numbers in color, mostly as gradients. On the
number line, the hue would change subtly about every ten numbers. That went
away shortly before adolescence though.

Granted, these are all purely mental images—there's no spatial or perceptual
component as in the article. Unfortunately no exceptional memory or recall
abilities either.

------
ta_donk_gt
Weird, I generally assumed most people visualize the calendar as a circle when
recalling dates. I've always been good at associating dates with events, but
never would have thought the circle had anything to do with it.

~~~
dave2000
I don't think i picture it at all in the same way that synasthetes literally
"see" other senses, but I do picture a year as a 2d row divided into
rectangles. I don't see it as a circle because I see no connection between the
end of December and the January of the same year. The next January starts at
the beginning of another row entirely unconnected to the previous year.

------
JeremyMorgan
I didn't realize this was rare. I think of a year in an ellipsis with January
at the far left, June at the far right. Years are a giant ribbon of various
colors.

I thought everyone had some kind of mental model of time. Though I am able to
remember great details just by "pins" on my ribbon, and there is an ellipsis
for each year ("oh yeah, that was in June of 1996" etc) so I guess it works
well for me. I just didn't know it was that rare.

------
sandworm101
Do these people "see time" or do they simply have a great memory for dates and
times? "Seeing time" is trek-level Xmen stuff. I expect someone who can
perceive gravity waves, someone who can witness relativity in action. Doctor
Manhattan had such a perception. That isn't the same as someone who is very
good at remembering artificial constructs such as dates and calenders.

~~~
therein
Agreed. The title is misleading because it gives the impression that these
people have some supernatural awareness of the timeline while that's not
what's happening here.

What this article depicts doesn't seem all that rare looking at this thread. I
can relate to some of these experiences as well and while I am a spatial
thinker, I definitely don't have synesthesia, I wish I did.

And here is a (non-exhaustive) list of people with synesthesia.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_synesthesi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_synesthesia)

------
ginko
I do that. Didn't know it was that uncommon. Maybe that's why I never had the
discipline to keep a calendar.

~~~
unsignedqword
I did some googling out of curiosity and was actually kind of surprised to
find out that, statistically, synesthesia affects about 3-5% of the
population. Certainly uncommon, but not as rare as I expected.

[http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/14073/1/p5469.pdf](http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/14073/1/p5469.pdf)

[http://www.daysyn.com/Types-of-Syn.html](http://www.daysyn.com/Types-of-
Syn.html)

Unfortunately, couldn't find that much data on the specific kind of "time-
space" synesthesia that was mentioned in the article. Bummer.

------
tuewocnc
I also see the year (not "time") as roughly a circle going round my body, but
vertically not horizontally as in the illustration. Also, the circle is
pitched at an angle so that I view it from my left side arcing over my body
(at a height of about a tall tree in front, with the future in front).

Each month has a colour but no shape, they are all more like a volume of air.
It rotates so that a given month is going through me, with future months going
high in the air in front and previous months there but not visible. The months
through November to January are more acutely curved. Each week is also a
circle and each day has a colour but the weeks are all the same circle
instance, not individual ones.

I don't have a good memory at all and none of my memories are in the circle.

------
biot
The comments on that page are more fascinating than the article itself. Many
people chiming in and describing their own personal brand of time/calendar
visualization.

~~~
pessimizer
And how similar they are. I do not relate to them in any way, but there seems
to be something there. I'm the kind of person who has to be reminded what
month it is.

------
hackney
Time is not seen. However one does, or does not, spatially relate the pittance
of that which we call memory is hardly what could be construed as 'seeing
time'. Try light from the circular construct that is the surrounding universe
and then you will get a perfect picture of time. I've witnessed it and it is a
mindblower to say the least.

------
bane
Weird, I think of time as more like an unending river going forwards and
backwards, and as it goes away from me it spreads out and becomes hazy and
less certain. More of a spatial vector than a loop as in this illustration.
But I can't say it's a strong visual image, more of a sense like smell or
hearing.

------
jarmitage
I have this. I see the year as a donut with December at the bottom.

I've thought about building a GUI calendar and a smart watch face for this.
Has anyone attempted / seen something like that?

~~~
AckSyn
I thought this kind of thing was "normal" for some people on par with how many
have photographic memories, or almost innate math abilities.

------
Kiro
I see time as a 3D wall. Very hard to explain.

