BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Can you see time?

[tamaranth]

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Can you see time?

Time-space synaesthesia: when time has a shape in one's mind.

I thought everyone did that

Do you have a shape for time? Do you have / experience other modes of 'synaesthesia' as set out in this article?

Comments

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Yes, doesn't everyone?

Numbers do too. Er, don't they?

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Um... I don't.

Normal monkey is normal.

[andrewducker]

Nope - I don't visualise time in that kind of way. If I'm specifically trying to work out something then I might imagine a plane, cube, or something else, but I don't get an automatic image of any kind.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

Nope, that's why I carry a piece of paper round with me all the time :-)

[ajshepherd.livejournal.com]

No, and I don't.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God.

I used to assume that everyone did that. Then, when I found out they didn't, I thought it was just me.

I cannot think of a date without instantly picturing myself next to this vast twisting, curving track - like a roller-coaster ride without the loops - that maps out the years. Depending which date I'm thinking about I always see myself as near that part of it, but aware of the rest. The shape is always consistent too, and very complicated; I'm not sure I could draw it, but I could try to make a 3D model of bits of it. But some aspects are consistent, such as the way I always picture the track curving upwards as the end of a decade approaches, and then suddenly flattening out and usually taking something of a turn as the new decade begins.

Oddly enough, when I think of the current year it always looks the same; a steady climb up through spring to summer, then a plunge down past autumn towards Christmas.

I like my mental timescape. It's a simple sort of memory cathedral that helps me remember dates by where they're placed. I was delighted to see a sort of computerised version in the Churchill Exhibition at the Cabinet War Rooms, a huge long light-table where you can zoom in on years, months and days to bring up images of relevant documents. The shape is much more boring than the one in my mind, of course, but the idea is there.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Nope. I've always been slightly envious of people with synaesthesia, as it sounds so interesting - but of course to them it's just normal.

My sense of time is non visual (or indeed almost non-existent). It's metaphorically like a starfield - lots and lots of little points in time with absolutely nothing connecting them, though if I really think about it I can draw lines between some of the brighter ones and see some sort of vague pattern. In other words completely chaotic!

[devilgate.livejournal.com]

Not the time thing, though it sounds great. But days have always had colours. And I realised when reading the article that I have a mild sense of colour for letters, too: when they gave B being turquiosey-blue as an example, that was just obviously badly wrong. B is much darker and duller than that.

[nils.livejournal.com]

Hm. I thought everyone did that...

[soulstar.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I hear music as colours. Time is ... long. A long, flat road. Time = distance. This is bizarrely hard to express, actually. It's just the way it is. Although apparently not for everyone!