Apr 4, 2010

time-space synaesthesia

How does the mind construct its perception of the passage of time? In some cases, in a nearly tangible way: a condition called time-space synaesthesia.
"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.
Of course, when wearable computer/projectors really take off, we'll all be time-space synaesthetes.

3 comments:

Paul Hamann said...

Uh...come again?

Jim Anderson said...

Not really sure what you're asking, Mr. Hamann.

Anonymous said...

One major difference between a wearable projector/computer and actual time-space synaesthesia is that the projector computer could potentially be reprogrammed to project an alternate time lay-out configuration, or at any time be shut off and removed (unless it's a permanent implant of sorts - yikes!), whereby time-space synaesthesia cannot be altered as its particular configuration/mapping of the time sequence is both fixed and hard-wired into the person's perception of time.