12 ms·

A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

309 points by mgerdts 3y ago

Gooblebrai 3y ago
These experiences really make me wonder how much of time is fundamental in the universe and how much of it is just a subjective experience created by the brain.
- BillyTheMage 3y ago
  Especially with time-dilation, there's no way time is anything but a big mishmash of crap.
gottorf 3y ago
Funny, Factorio has the same effect on me.
- colechristensen 3y ago
  Don’t play the space exploration mod.
krackers 3y ago
Do animals have a sense of time in the same sense we do?
- mjevans 3y ago
  I've anecdotally seen plenty of evidence for object / other being permanence. However I don't know offhand of a good study design for gauging the perception of time rather than other factors like hunger, restroom need, sleep, etc.
- gurchik 3y ago
  What do you mean "in the same sense we do?" Pets are good at learning your schedule. They know when you normally come home, or when you feed them, and they start to get impatient if you're late in either. Sure, that example relies on another factor as a frame of reference (hunger, or the sun setting). But don't humans do that as well? Our sense of time shifts dramatically when we're kept indoors without the ability to see natural light.
  - stefan_ 3y ago
    They do not know about daylight saving time, however.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    My cat has a particularly keen sense for when dinner time is. He starts reminding me at 5PM, often on the dot. One could probably set a clock to it.
    - robbintt 3y ago
      We actually just had a cat change her food seeking behavior by exactly 1 hour during daylight savings, which allowed us to mostly exclude her internal clock and time sense.
- latchkey 3y ago
  From what I've read, dogs can smell time through the decay of scent particles. They don't know that an hour has passed, but they know that something doesn't smell as strongly. They understand day/night, but don't understand the concept of time the way we do.
  - Trasmatta 3y ago
    Regardless, the dogs I've known have known the exact time for breakfast and dinner better than any humans I've known, and without any clocks to look at
    - latchkey 3y ago
      My dog is an odd ball weirdo... he will have a whole bowl of food and not eat it until you spoon feed it to him or drop a few pieces on the ground first. Or he will eat it all in the middle of the night when I'm asleep. I end up just leaving a full bowl for him all the time cause I never know when he's hungry. I've tried to schedule him for food and he just won't go along with it at all.
- EGreg 3y ago
  Smaller animals seem to have much faster muscle twitch and reaction time. It's very likely that they perceive the finer motor control much faster than humans. But if a fly can dodge raindrops, what must it be thinking when it's sitting on a windowsill for like an hour? Is that like 3 days for it? I don't recommend it, but people have experienced serious time dilation while doing shrooms: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16714323/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16714323/ Has anyone experienced this? Also this: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2019.00005 https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2019.0000...
  - BillyTheMage 3y ago
    The world stood still every time I did mushrooms. Check the clock at 9:30, trip all night long, check the clock again and it's only 10:15. If you're having a good trip it's a divine gift, you get to trip for like 20 hours in under 3 or 4 hours. But if you're having a bad trip it's the 17th layer of hell and you have to keep going back to the beginning every time you think about time.
  - agumonkey 3y ago
    von bertalanffy talks about it in his general systems theory some small animals have a refresh rate that is different from us, and if you stimulate their vision faster than that, they don't perceive it
- account17 3y ago
  Anecdotal and very "noisey". My cat badgers me when I'm up too late (midnight) even though it's been hours since the sun set. She badgers me if I sleep in too long on the weekends, etc. She seems to have an idea of the day-to-day schedule and get's upset if it's not followed. So at least cats seem to display evidence of knowing a "schedule" based on more cues then just daylight/hunger
  - Nursie 3y ago
    Ha, yeah our male cat will come and shout at us if he thinks we're up too late!
- hnick 3y ago
  I'm not sure there is even a way to study the fact that other people have the same sense of time that we do - I think this would fall under qualia. We just assume it's roughly the same like I should see the blue you see. Regardless it's clear from training our dogs that they feel impatience, which I think would be best described as a rising sense of discomfort over time. A younger dog and/or one with less training will get up more quickly by itself seeking a reward, while after more training they can put those thoughts aside and wait through it. After a tough day of training or sports, just like us they have less willpower remaining and are more likely to revert. And right now it's 3:30 pm and he's letting me know the school kids have left the neighbourhood so it's time for his walk. I'd chalk this reaction up to other factors like the noise outside but it happens during the holidays too.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  I intimately believe that what we call time is partly distance / effort biologically.
ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
Brain damage is scary. I'm glad the author was able to make at least a partial recovery.
Jonnston 3y ago
Kant in shambles
- DiscourseFan 3y ago
  beat me to it
- quintdamage 3y ago
  wait why lol
candiddevmike 3y ago
This is the first time I've heard lupus cause severe brain damage. Is this a rare occurrence? Since it's inflammation, could this same scenario happen with meningitis?
- caddemon 3y ago
  Psychosis is a potential symptom of lupus, albeit uncommon. Some people with lupus have been misdiagnosed with Schizophrenia, and more generally there are signs of immune dysfunction in many cases of Schizophrenia. I'm not sure about this particular scenario, but psychosis is also a potential symptom of meningitis, and brain inflammation can definitely cause weird behaviors (e.g. the account in the book Brain on Fire). It's not "severe damage" in the traditional sense, but depending on illness and treatment timeline there can be irreversible life-altering psychiatric consequences from brain inflammation.
reitanqild 3y ago
ADHD is sometimes wittily described as time dyslexia, and while I haven't met anyone who has described symptoms as bad as this and also know friends with ADHD who play music seemingly effortlessly, this article was still very interesting to me. I have understood and it also observed that meditation can help somewhat, and I wonder what else can help for people otherwise function well who struggle with time?
- LoganDark 3y ago
  > ADHD is sometimes wittily described as time dyslexia As someone with ADHD, this wildly misrepresents the actual disorder. ADHD itself has nothing to do with time, it has to do with executive function. Someone with ADHD can try to will themselves into doing something and simply not be able to. They'll try to make a command, and their body or brain will not listen to them. It will completely refuse to do what they tell it to. This isn't supposed to happen; you're supposed to have control over what you do. You are supposed to be able to decide to do something, get up and simply do it. But with ADHD, it's not that simple. Even things that require no physical action are difficult, because it's not the actual movement that's hard, it's the decision-making itself. Hence "executive dysfunction". Any "time dyslexia" effect, wrt scheduling and deadlines and etcetara, is just a symptom of it. The reason why people with ADHD procrastinate is not: - because they don't know what time it is. - because they don't know when their deadline is. - because they don't know how much time they have. - because they don't know how much time they need. - because they don't know how easy or hard the task is. It is because their brain wants to do something else more, and it's not urgent yet. They absolutely cannot work on the task no matter how hard they try. They have not forgotten. They are not slacking off. They literally just can't do it. Their brain refuses to think about it, their body refuses to move for it. They don't have the willpower or the motivation for it. They are trapped. They are completely unable to make any progress because their brain will not let them. That's what ADHD is. Not everyone has it this bad, but ADHD is typically characterized by this happening for at least some things. It could be "showering more than once a week", it could be "doing the dishes before 20 of them have piled up in a big stack", it could be "preparing for a road trip days in advance". It doesn't have to be everything, and it doesn't have to be completely insurmountable, but if you have to have a complicated coping mechanism in order to manage to do something that you otherwise can't just decide to do, that's the disorder.
deleted 3y ago
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js2 3y ago
Diane Van Deren is an ultra runner who had part of her brain removed to treat her seizures. It also affected her ability to perceive time and to read maps. She originally started running to self-treat her seizures, but eventually running no longer staved them off. Oddly, not being able to perceive time may have benefitted her running: > Dr. Gerber credits her endurance in part to her brain limitations. He says runners who can better track time and map where they are can be distracted by the details. But Van Deren has a special facility for what he calls “flow” that lets her transcend the anguish of running long. “It’s a mental state,” Gerber says. “You become enmeshed in what you’re doing. It’s almost Zen. She can run for hours and not know how long she’s been going.” https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a21763474/fixing-dianes-brain/ https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a21763474/fixin... I first heard about her on Radiolab: https://radiolab.org/podcast/122291-in-running https://radiolab.org/podcast/122291-in-running
- passion__desire 3y ago
  My genius friend in college could naturally focus so intensely that he didn't realise that there was electric short circuit near his desk.
- abrookewood 3y ago
  There's a book by Oliver Sacks that covers people affected by strange neurological disorders and it is fascinating [0]. I can't recall any of them being viewed in a positive light, but it's still worth a read. [0]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63697.The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat_and_Other_Clinical_Tales https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63697.The_Man_Who_Mistoo...
  - dendrite9 3y ago
    That book helped someone I know he was mostly face blind. Recently I was listening to a discussion where someone was trying to explain her synesthesia about time to a bunch of people who didn't experience that. I found it really hard to wrap my head around, but there is a picture in this article of how one person visualizes time over the course of a year. The idea is just so far from what I think of as normal that it is difficult to really grasp. "I thought everyone thought like I did, says Holly Branigan, also a scientist at Edinburgh University, and someone with time-space synaesthesia. "I found out when I attended a talk in the department that Julia was giving. She said that some synaesthetes can see time. And I thought, 'Oh my god, that means I've got synaesthesia'." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8248589.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8248589.stm
Trasmatta 3y ago
On very high doses of DXM it felt like I was in hell for eternity. It sucked, would not recommend.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  I forgot about the time distortion from that! When I was in high school I like to get to first or 2nd plateau and ride around town on my bike listening to music on my MP3 player.
  - Trasmatta 3y ago
    3rd and 4th plateaus are so far beyond 2nd plateau too. One again, would not recommend.
- ladzoppelin 3y ago
  Wow, this comment made me confused as I thought you were talking about DMT so I searched and ended up in a redit talking about "what drug should I do Dph,dxm or DMT" The ignorance about drugs these days is mind blowing considering the available info. I would post a link to redit message but its not worth it. Seriously the first 3 replies are the most ignorant destructive replies I have seen in a while.
  - Trasmatta 3y ago
    My hot take is that you shouldn't take any of them. Especially DXM and DPH. But even DMT, the things you can learn on drugs, you can learn on other, safer ways.
- sedatk 3y ago
  I remember reading stories about people who took a substance (can't remember which) and lived entire imaginary lives in a fantasy world in real-time: that is for years, they go to school, have kids, go to work, etc., until they wake up and it would have been only 15 minutes in actual life.
  - 3y ago
grogenaut 3y ago
After my mom's stroke she basically lost the concept of time. Apparently it's relatively common. Kids don't get the concept of time until an age, and you can lose it. Amazing how much you need it how things fall apart in this modern life without it. Didn't help that she decided to use a 2017 calendar in 2018, I questioned my sanity as I unraveled the mess. It very much impacted her life. About the only good thing was that she'd just eat at any time we wanted. "I could eat" became the answer always, not that it wasn't before. Woman loved a good scallop and was quick with a fork if you tried to take hers.
- ryanSrich 3y ago
  How does that work in practice? She can read a clock right? So would she just not remember to look at the clock to see the time? Genuinely curious.
  - haswell 3y ago
    My brother is dealing with a TBI, and in a nutshell, it’s exactly that. The reason most of us glance at the clock is because we feel the passage of time and wonder what time it must be now. He doesn’t always feel time passing, and he could go hours before it even occurs to him to look at his phone or a clock. He relies on timers and reminders to keep things on track.
    - Gigachad 3y ago
      I think there is a lot of promising tech to help people out with this stuff. Just having your phone prompt you when you need to do stuff. I saw Google maps (perhaps recently) added a feature where you tell it the time you need to be somewhere and it will notify you when it's time to leave.
      - haswell 3y ago
        He uses his iPhone extensively to do things like this. I recently learned that the native Calendar app can do the same thing for scheduled appointments that have a location specified. Reminders can be set for things like: (can set multiple) "30 minutes before travel time" or "Time to leave", etc. One thing he's struggled with is establishing the habits to set up these kinds of tools. There are often other issues associated with TBI and memory/new habit formation have been a challenge. Needs reminders for the reminders. He's determined to find the right combination of tools/processes so he can create a guide to help other people use their current tools to manage this aspect of their lives. The potential is definitely there.
512 3y ago
I feel I have a slightly "time-warped" memory. I often can't tell whether something was two months or over a year ago, for instance. I believe this to be caused by depression, as I've seen many similar reports online. Life assumes a sort of "flow" state, as you don't care enough to pay attention to things. It affects my memory in general as well.
- swells34 3y ago
  I have something very similar. When I get very focused on something, you can ask me what I had for breakfast, and I'll vividly remember and recount making an omelette; but that was three weeks ago. This goes for pretty much anything, even very unique events. I can remember it well, but I can only place it within about an 8 month period, even if it was just a week or two ago. I'm quite nervous about ever having to be in a court proceeding, giving a deposition or anything like that where specific dates are required; it just escapes me how people remember this stuff.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lakpan 3y ago
  Is it possible that you've fallen into a habitual life? I have almost a black hole in my memory from 3-year period that I spent mostly at home. After that period, I can look at a photo in my gallery and know almost the exact date when it happened. Or vice-versa, knowing where I was on a specific period 7 years ago.
- devjab 3y ago
  With ADHD this is pretty much a thing. If you also get the “funzies” where you sometimes “relieve” a moment in a way that is so real that you end up speaking out loud in response to the relived memory, you should probably consider getting it looked into. Especially if your depression isn’t a “real” depression. What I mean by that isn’t to minimise it’s impact or how it feels, but I was once in a depression group where I just didn’t fit in. I was in it because I had been suicidal, so, well I obviously wasn’t doing ok, but unlike the other members of the group I could get up in the morning just fine. Long story short, I was diagnosed with ADHD to which depression and anxiety are often “friends” when it isn’t treated. And by treated I don’t only mean medicated. Anyway, if this isn’t you, then I’m sorry for derailing you a bit.
fortran77 3y ago
As someone who plays in community orchestras, I've never known any violist to have the ability to perceive time.
- tomcam 3y ago
  Ba dum dum tsss
alexey-salmin 3y ago
Reads like another chapter of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat"
GistNoesis 3y ago
What about solitude, solitary confinement, social isolation, with respect to the perception of time ? How much of it is link to a physiological injury like inflammation vs loss of markers ?
- rabite 3y ago
  I was imprisoned on false charges and tortured by the United States government. A precedent-setting appeal freed me, but not before I spent a long time in solitary confinement, much of that on a hunger strike. Solitary confinement causes brain damage so severe it is visible on a CT scan. The area that it damages is the hippocampus, which is key of in the perception of time and spatial memory. I can still perceive time on an immediate basis, in terms of music and speech, but a year goes by in a haze. Short seconds, like walking into another room, seem to pass slowly against the rapid progress of my thoughts which are now unanchored to the immediate physical realm and I forget what I went to the other room for if there's not a persistent reminder such as hunger or the need to use the toilet to remind me. I write what I plan to do into a notes app before I move anywhere, even one room over in my own house. Living a normal life has become impossible.
  - GistNoesis 3y ago
    Thanks for your feedback. I feel sorry for you. Malnutrition probably didn't help with respect to the CT injuries. Does in-person conversation help to stabilize your flow of time ? Can piggybacking on someone else (like a helper, or group activities) help you recover your own sense of longer term coherency by synchronizing your flow with others ?
    - rabite 3y ago
      > Does in-person conversation help to stabilize your flow of time? No, it makes it a lot harder. It's easiest on a short-term basis if I constantly echo a phrase over and over in my head, like an internal metronome. I can't do that and talk at the same time. Nothing really helps, it is actual physical damage to your brain and nobody knows how to fix it. The best thing is to just accept that your brain is really broken and start finding mnemonics and workarounds to get by.
LoganDark 3y ago
I don't have much difficulty perceiving time in general, but I have a dissociative disorder that can really, really fuck with it: Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. (It's not an "identity disorder", but a "dissociative identity" disorder, the clinical name for the so-called "personalities".) When one of the other "personalities" is out in my place, that length of time will be lost to me. As if I just teleported forward. Things that happened before the event will feel more recent than they really were, and things that happened during the event, I won't remember at all. Because those memories weren't mine to begin with - they are memories of someone else that lives in my head. This results in a lot of very fun situations, but it mostly results in me losing big chunks of my life and not knowing things that just so happen to have been told to someone other than me. (I didn't forget, those memories just belong to someone else!) I've also had some small number of dissociative episodes, which are even worse because I can get really extreme time dilation during the episode, but also phantom sensations like endless pain and suffering-- you get the idea. It can get really really fucked. I'm lucky not to have completely lost my sense of time, but having to figure out a bunch of identity stuff every single day is very Fun. Sometimes it's actually fun and other times it's the big existential crisis that never ends.
- unobatbayar 3y ago
  I truly understand you. I've researched into this for a long time but found that it's not currently curable. Have you tried healing your trauma? Please share anything you've tried or done to cope with DID.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    My trauma really isn't healable, on top of just getting a healthy dose of Fresh trauma a few weeks ago. Honestly, DID isn't meant to be cured and coping sort of just consists of accepting that this is your life now. Now, I did a lot more than that because I encouraged plurality and allowed each identity to express themselves and have fun lives, and that's honestly probably the best coping that could have been done. Living life as multiple is just different. Some people are able to integrate and become just one person, but I would rather die than do that. Being multiple is my identity. Without that, I'd be lost.
et1337 3y ago
I think it's interesting that HN in particular seems to be fascinated by brain injuries, myself included. Losing brain functionality is a scary thought for people who enjoy using their brains all day. edit: also I find my HN comment history to be a really good check on my perception of time. It's weird to see the random thoughts I wrote out in my down time. I ALWAYS think, "wow that was 3 months ago?"
- eastbound 3y ago
  I really think we’ll discover that programming is toxic for the brain. Mechanisms: - Intense loss of memory, inability to remember names and faces, since everything can be written down all the time, - Periods of flow interrupted by compilation time, change of topic (looking at the web), within a lot of stress (want to deliver the feature, excited to set up the architecture), - Long hours working, sometimes into the night, thus grave loss of sleep, - Sedentary intellectual-only work, no use of the body, and more importantly no use of facial features, no smile, no talking for hours and even years long. - Eventually, social networks top up all those with intense context-switching and dopamine addiction, Leading to early onset of Alzheimer, or, as we’ll call it, Eastbound Disease. Of course that doesn’t have to be your fate! But programming takes you into that slippery slope very easily. To anyone downloading: Please argument too, because I don’t understand, thank you.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    I don't think any of these are exclusive to programming. You can fit in any addictive activity into this template.
  - number6 3y ago
    Since nobody answered you: intriguing argument but that's not a byproduct of programming but of alienation. You don't have to live this way even if you love programming.
- lm28469 3y ago
  > Losing brain functionality is a scary thought for people who enjoy using their brains all day. I'm fairly sure people outside of HN enjoy using their brains too, I'd say the vast majority of people do
dclowd9901 3y ago
> Six years after my recovery, my memory overall is not as sharp as it was before my illness. I use to-do lists to keep myself on track. I triple-check the rehearsal dates on emails I send my students to make sure I haven’t listed the wrong day or month, although sometimes mistakes still slip through. I also sometimes struggle to remember how far back events in my past happened. I’ll catch myself wondering if I had the oil in my car changed three months ago or a year ago. But every time I take my viola out of its case, I feel grateful to be able to think like a musician again. Probably a testament more to the savant like intelligence of a classically trained musician than an objective description of someone’s stunted recovery. For me, I exercise the same extra work to keep up with my day to day, though to my knowledge, have never had a traumatic brain injury.
thunkle 3y ago
I tried a 5mg THC edible last week (new user) and I lost my short term memory for about 50 hours. It was hell because I could still remember some things but my visual memory was 0, so it was like I was always coming out of a dark cloud that's 15 seconds behind me, but perceiving now in full clarity. It really messed with my perception of time. I wonder how many times I thought: "what's going on... ok you lost your short term memory... but now is so clear... but it won't be soon... how long has this been happening... " I cried 40 hours in because I didn't know if it would ever come back. Luckily it did and I'm here a week later with hopefully little scars.
- TheCapeGreek 3y ago
  That's... an interesting reaction. I'm sorry you had to go through it. What's notable for me is that this happened at such a low dose. Maybe there's something more to it in terms of interaction or reaction in your body?
- j16sdiz 3y ago
  This syndrome is common, but 50 hours is unusually long.
  - thunkle 3y ago
    It was 50 hours til I felt 100% normal. The bulk of it was in the first several hours.
- rexpop 3y ago
  This is my experience with THC and it's definitely anxiety inducing! A good reason to avoid the drug. I imagine that with the proper mindset, and in the proper setting, short term memory usage might be less important or even a hindrance. I could see this as a boon when playing silly games, goofing off in the ocean, or maybe doing something akin to talk therapy, but for anything I currently enjoy doing, holding onto a thought and following it to logical conclusions is a primary necessity.
- imperialdrive 3y ago
  Very similar happened to me smoking the first time. Mostly due to not knowing limit. Looking back I'd say it was like ~5x what would have done the job. To this day I need to carefully dose. Awesome time vs anxious time is not far apart dose-wise. Glhf!
xwdv 3y ago
This could be liberating or terrifying. If you don’t notice time passing, does it feel like you’re just in some eternal existence beyond time, where you have all the time in the world? Or do you just instantly come to a realization some day that time is up and you’re dead?
agumonkey 3y ago
I don't know how common it is but some event removed this ability in me for a month. No "injury" per se just some strange brain changes.
Nursie 3y ago
"The shape of each synaesthete's year is different. (Image based on an original illustration by Carol Steen)" Doesn't everyone have a weird, slightly wiggly loop in their head that represents the year? I don't stand in the middle of mine as described in the article, I view it like it's a diagram on a screen, and we move round it like game pieces on a board. The first six months of the year are comparatively compressed, with July and August largest the presence (they are on the left, roughly between ESE and NE). Or I did, I haven't thought about it for a while, I think it might be one of the many things that having a pocket do-everything device has down-emphasised. Either that or moving hemispheres and changing the mapping between months and seasons has altered the way I think about it. I always figured that at some formative point in my childhood I saw some sort of representation of a year like this and just internalised it fully.
- hnbad 3y ago
  In my experience, usually when you read in an article how people marvel at something someone does and you think "doesn't everyone do that?" the answer is no, they don't. No, I've never thought of a year as having a shape and neither does anyone I know. If prompted to draw something they'd likely go with a clock-like circle but that's because that's how it's usually visualized (I think every kindergarden or elementary school has a picture showing the four seasons as clock-wise segments of a circle somewhere) but it's not how they "think" of it. If you told them to point to "September" they wouldn't point in a direction, they'd wonder what the heck you asked them to do. I spent most of my life thinking the idea of thoughts being a "voice in your head" was a metaphor. Surely people who don't suffer from hallucinations don't literally have a voice in their head vocalizing their thoughts in full sentences, right? Thoughts are just nebulous "vibes" that need to be manifested into speech intentionally if you want to express them, right? Turns out no, I'm the weird one. Most people do have a voice in their head and it's usually only considered a problem when there's more than one or you don't like what it's saying. I also spent most of my life thinking people don't really can see an object they imagine as if it were present and seeing things that aren't there means you're hallucinating. But again, no, I just have aphantasia and there are degrees of "visual imagination" but most people can indeed conjure up somewhat lifelike images (or at least relatively "hi-res renderings") in their mind, often with sound and smell (no, not just vibes, the actual perception of hearing and smelling) as well. I also always thought "habit" was a fanciful way of saying you condition yourself to do one thing after another, like always putting the tooth paste in the same place after putting some on the brush head. Something that becomes easier after a while because you know the steps and can follow them like a mental to-do list. But no, many people can literally make themselves go through entire chains of actions without having to make deliberate decisions to do so at every point, just by repeating the same cycle of trigger & action enough times. And for them it sticks, too. They don't just do it for a few months and then phase out when they stop putting in the effort because it happens unconsciously. They don't get distracted by an intrusive thought halfway and then forget what they were doing. They don't have to "block the main thread" to do a habit, they have "userland background processes" in addition to the "system processes" like breathing and walking. I used to think everyone had to do a conscious check on themselves to determine whether they need to go to the toilet, have a snack, drink something or get warm/cold before the emergency alarm kicks in and tells you have to do so right now or else. Again, no, most people somehow are just aware of that, like the desperation meters in the Sims games. If you ask them if they'd like something to eat and they aren't urgently hungry they can just tell you and don't actively need to think about it. Oh and related to this article: I used to think nobody actually "felt" time really. It's just something that happens and as you grow older you learn that certain events or tasks take up certain amounts of time and when you know what time it was earlier and what has been done or happened since you'll have a good guess what time it is now and you can recalibrate by checking the time in between so your estimates get better. Nope! Tons of people can literally tell you the approximate time without wasting mental capacity on keeping track of all of that. They're able to do a thing, figure that they've already spent half an hour on something they expected to take fifteen minutes and call it quits rather than come out the other end six hours later wondering where the time went -- and when you tell them this is what it's like for you and they say they know what you mean that's only because they're talking about things they do while "in the flow", not literally doing anything. There's a reason the neurodiversity movement uses the term "neurodiversity": it's not about individual clusters of neurodivergence. A person is neurodivergent or neurotypical. But people are neurodiverse. Always. Some people are time blind, some people have aphantasia, some people have both, most have neither. But across a non-trivial sample size you'll always have a diversity of neurotypes and everyone will be "weird" at least in some way, even if they share the same diagnostic label (or lack thereof). Heck, if you factor in enough variables, divergence is the norm rather than the exception.
growingkittens 3y ago
I have an early childhood brain injury, and I don't perceive time passing. I never knew time. I took a medication (abilify) that made me aware of the passage of time. It was excruciating, I had to stop. My brain had no framework for handling the input.
menacingly 3y ago
Brain issues are always so fascinating. The subjective experience is to diagnose a faulty sensor using the sensor. The brain that both I and the author agree seems to be acting up also wrote this article. Did it mess with your ability to perceive time, or alter your recollection of how you once perceived time, or alter your ability to assess your perception of time, or activate a hidden "too aware of second-order time phenomena" organ
- Name_Chawps 3y ago
  It seems like the altered time perception caused behaviors in the moment like interrupting others that can be verified by others, so probably this is not an issue with recall/ability to assess perception of time.
7373737373 3y ago
The following is not really related to time perception per se, but a fascinating look into memory: "A REVIEW OF 80 YEARS OF MEMORIES INDUCTED BY ELECTRICAL BRAIN STIMULATION" https://web.archive.org/web/20200126062547/http://gpe.ups-tlse.fr/memstim.php https://web.archive.org/web/20200126062547/http://gpe.ups-tl... (Source data for this paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763416306820 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976341...)
rafaelvasco 3y ago
Time, as we perceive it doesn't really exist. It's much more complicated than what we perceive, as it should be otherwise we would not be able to live in society. Our brains create the apparent linearity of time to give us a sense of progression. But it doesn't really work that way. In my opinion, no evidence here, we could even communicate with someone that lived in the past. Because that's not the absolute past. That person lives still in another layer of reality. As such there's no such thing as past and future. It's just a construct from our brains. That's my view. Not affirming anything.
dghughes 3y ago
I'm surprised we can even do anything. The delay seeing something until the signal gets to my brain then to process it and then to act takes ages. We all live in the past by about 30ms to 120ms.
picadores 3y ago
Could a smart-watch based interrupt and reminder of "basic overview task" work as a time-keeping prosthesis?
reiichiroh 3y ago
I am experiencing hallucination and memory issues for the first time after having a cardiac event very recently at a relatively young 45. On top of one eye being nearsighted and the other being far sighted, the closest I would describe this is ocular and mental auto correc/complete powered by low horse power gpt.
jaakl 3y ago
I remember serious time slowdown - eg distortion of sound pitch, just like with slowed down grammaphone with overuse of cannabis back in the university times. It was interesting, but not pleasant. But I guess thats quite common thing for many drugs. Later on I have thought-trained myself to think of time of something arbitrary - I can more-less think of future and past to anytime I wish to. So distant pleasant memories are just as 5 min ago, and something unpleasant is consciously very far in past. It is like being able to time-travel, and it can be quite inspiring and revealing thing. Can be confusing also, I can see and feel myself as 25 years younger (as 20yr old) anytime, but the others probably dont.
fallingfrog 3y ago
The last paragraph where she describes her life six years later is pretty much exactly what adhd is like. “I use to-do lists to keep myself on track. I triple-check the rehearsal dates on emails I send my students to make sure I haven’t listed the wrong day or month, although sometimes mistakes still slip through. I also sometimes struggle to remember how far back events in my past happened. I’ll catch myself wondering if I had the oil in my car changed three months ago or a year ago.” I’ve always regarded the ability to remember when the last oil change or when you registered your car was to be some kind of exotic magic trick that everyone but me can do, like I’m living in a world full of savants with abilities I’ll never have. My biggest problem on the job is that I don’t really have any sense of how things take; I work on something for as long as it stays interesting or until it’s done. My project time estimates are hilariously bad. I have no idea how long it took me to do something after the fact, until I get congratulated or reprimanded by my boss. For me, it’s kind of like being colorblind and being told I’m stupid my whole life because I can’t separate the red m&ms from the brown ones. They’re all brown to me!

309 points by mgerdts 3y ago

These experiences really make me wonder how much of time is fundamental in the universe and how much of it is just a subjective experience created by the brain.

BillyTheMage 3y ago
Especially with time-dilation, there's no way time is anything but a big mishmash of crap.

gottorf 3y ago

Funny, Factorio has the same effect on me.

colechristensen 3y ago
Don’t play the space exploration mod.

krackers 3y ago

Do animals have a sense of time in the same sense we do?

mjevans 3y ago
I've anecdotally seen plenty of evidence for object / other being permanence. However I don't know offhand of a good study design for gauging the perception of time rather than other factors like hunger, restroom need, sleep, etc.
gurchik 3y ago
What do you mean "in the same sense we do?" Pets are good at learning your schedule. They know when you normally come home, or when you feed them, and they start to get impatient if you're late in either. Sure, that example relies on another factor as a frame of reference (hunger, or the sun setting). But don't humans do that as well? Our sense of time shifts dramatically when we're kept indoors without the ability to see natural light.
- stefan_ 3y ago
  They do not know about daylight saving time, however.
- jwells89 3y ago
  My cat has a particularly keen sense for when dinner time is. He starts reminding me at 5PM, often on the dot. One could probably set a clock to it.
  - robbintt 3y ago
    We actually just had a cat change her food seeking behavior by exactly 1 hour during daylight savings, which allowed us to mostly exclude her internal clock and time sense.
latchkey 3y ago
From what I've read, dogs can smell time through the decay of scent particles. They don't know that an hour has passed, but they know that something doesn't smell as strongly. They understand day/night, but don't understand the concept of time the way we do.
- Trasmatta 3y ago
  Regardless, the dogs I've known have known the exact time for breakfast and dinner better than any humans I've known, and without any clocks to look at
  - latchkey 3y ago
    My dog is an odd ball weirdo... he will have a whole bowl of food and not eat it until you spoon feed it to him or drop a few pieces on the ground first. Or he will eat it all in the middle of the night when I'm asleep. I end up just leaving a full bowl for him all the time cause I never know when he's hungry. I've tried to schedule him for food and he just won't go along with it at all.
EGreg 3y ago
Smaller animals seem to have much faster muscle twitch and reaction time. It's very likely that they perceive the finer motor control much faster than humans. But if a fly can dodge raindrops, what must it be thinking when it's sitting on a windowsill for like an hour? Is that like 3 days for it? I don't recommend it, but people have experienced serious time dilation while doing shrooms: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16714323/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16714323/ Has anyone experienced this? Also this: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2019.00005 https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2019.0000...
- BillyTheMage 3y ago
  The world stood still every time I did mushrooms. Check the clock at 9:30, trip all night long, check the clock again and it's only 10:15. If you're having a good trip it's a divine gift, you get to trip for like 20 hours in under 3 or 4 hours. But if you're having a bad trip it's the 17th layer of hell and you have to keep going back to the beginning every time you think about time.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  von bertalanffy talks about it in his general systems theory some small animals have a refresh rate that is different from us, and if you stimulate their vision faster than that, they don't perceive it
account17 3y ago
Anecdotal and very "noisey". My cat badgers me when I'm up too late (midnight) even though it's been hours since the sun set. She badgers me if I sleep in too long on the weekends, etc. She seems to have an idea of the day-to-day schedule and get's upset if it's not followed. So at least cats seem to display evidence of knowing a "schedule" based on more cues then just daylight/hunger
- Nursie 3y ago
  Ha, yeah our male cat will come and shout at us if he thinks we're up too late!
hnick 3y ago
I'm not sure there is even a way to study the fact that other people have the same sense of time that we do - I think this would fall under qualia. We just assume it's roughly the same like I should see the blue you see. Regardless it's clear from training our dogs that they feel impatience, which I think would be best described as a rising sense of discomfort over time. A younger dog and/or one with less training will get up more quickly by itself seeking a reward, while after more training they can put those thoughts aside and wait through it. After a tough day of training or sports, just like us they have less willpower remaining and are more likely to revert. And right now it's 3:30 pm and he's letting me know the school kids have left the neighbourhood so it's time for his walk. I'd chalk this reaction up to other factors like the noise outside but it happens during the holidays too.
agumonkey 3y ago
I intimately believe that what we call time is partly distance / effort biologically.

ThrowawayTestr 3y ago

Brain damage is scary. I'm glad the author was able to make at least a partial recovery.

Jonnston 3y ago

Kant in shambles

DiscourseFan 3y ago
beat me to it
quintdamage 3y ago
wait why lol

candiddevmike 3y ago

This is the first time I've heard lupus cause severe brain damage. Is this a rare occurrence? Since it's inflammation, could this same scenario happen with meningitis?

caddemon 3y ago
Psychosis is a potential symptom of lupus, albeit uncommon. Some people with lupus have been misdiagnosed with Schizophrenia, and more generally there are signs of immune dysfunction in many cases of Schizophrenia. I'm not sure about this particular scenario, but psychosis is also a potential symptom of meningitis, and brain inflammation can definitely cause weird behaviors (e.g. the account in the book Brain on Fire). It's not "severe damage" in the traditional sense, but depending on illness and treatment timeline there can be irreversible life-altering psychiatric consequences from brain inflammation.

reitanqild 3y ago

ADHD is sometimes wittily described as time dyslexia, and while I haven't met anyone who has described symptoms as bad as this and also know friends with ADHD who play music seemingly effortlessly, this article was still very interesting to me. I have understood and it also observed that meditation can help somewhat, and I wonder what else can help for people otherwise function well who struggle with time?

LoganDark 3y ago
> ADHD is sometimes wittily described as time dyslexia As someone with ADHD, this wildly misrepresents the actual disorder. ADHD itself has nothing to do with time, it has to do with executive function. Someone with ADHD can try to will themselves into doing something and simply not be able to. They'll try to make a command, and their body or brain will not listen to them. It will completely refuse to do what they tell it to. This isn't supposed to happen; you're supposed to have control over what you do. You are supposed to be able to decide to do something, get up and simply do it. But with ADHD, it's not that simple. Even things that require no physical action are difficult, because it's not the actual movement that's hard, it's the decision-making itself. Hence "executive dysfunction". Any "time dyslexia" effect, wrt scheduling and deadlines and etcetara, is just a symptom of it. The reason why people with ADHD procrastinate is not: - because they don't know what time it is. - because they don't know when their deadline is. - because they don't know how much time they have. - because they don't know how much time they need. - because they don't know how easy or hard the task is. It is because their brain wants to do something else more, and it's not urgent yet. They absolutely cannot work on the task no matter how hard they try. They have not forgotten. They are not slacking off. They literally just can't do it. Their brain refuses to think about it, their body refuses to move for it. They don't have the willpower or the motivation for it. They are trapped. They are completely unable to make any progress because their brain will not let them. That's what ADHD is. Not everyone has it this bad, but ADHD is typically characterized by this happening for at least some things. It could be "showering more than once a week", it could be "doing the dishes before 20 of them have piled up in a big stack", it could be "preparing for a road trip days in advance". It doesn't have to be everything, and it doesn't have to be completely insurmountable, but if you have to have a complicated coping mechanism in order to manage to do something that you otherwise can't just decide to do, that's the disorder.

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js2 3y ago

Diane Van Deren is an ultra runner who had part of her brain removed to treat her seizures. It also affected her ability to perceive time and to read maps. She originally started running to self-treat her seizures, but eventually running no longer staved them off. Oddly, not being able to perceive time may have benefitted her running: > Dr. Gerber credits her endurance in part to her brain limitations. He says runners who can better track time and map where they are can be distracted by the details. But Van Deren has a special facility for what he calls “flow” that lets her transcend the anguish of running long. “It’s a mental state,” Gerber says. “You become enmeshed in what you’re doing. It’s almost Zen. She can run for hours and not know how long she’s been going.” https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a21763474/fixing-dianes-brain/ https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a21763474/fixin... I first heard about her on Radiolab: https://radiolab.org/podcast/122291-in-running https://radiolab.org/podcast/122291-in-running

passion__desire 3y ago
My genius friend in college could naturally focus so intensely that he didn't realise that there was electric short circuit near his desk.
abrookewood 3y ago
There's a book by Oliver Sacks that covers people affected by strange neurological disorders and it is fascinating [0]. I can't recall any of them being viewed in a positive light, but it's still worth a read. [0]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63697.The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat_and_Other_Clinical_Tales https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63697.The_Man_Who_Mistoo...
- dendrite9 3y ago
  That book helped someone I know he was mostly face blind. Recently I was listening to a discussion where someone was trying to explain her synesthesia about time to a bunch of people who didn't experience that. I found it really hard to wrap my head around, but there is a picture in this article of how one person visualizes time over the course of a year. The idea is just so far from what I think of as normal that it is difficult to really grasp. "I thought everyone thought like I did, says Holly Branigan, also a scientist at Edinburgh University, and someone with time-space synaesthesia. "I found out when I attended a talk in the department that Julia was giving. She said that some synaesthetes can see time. And I thought, 'Oh my god, that means I've got synaesthesia'." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8248589.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8248589.stm

Trasmatta 3y ago

On very high doses of DXM it felt like I was in hell for eternity. It sucked, would not recommend.

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
I forgot about the time distortion from that! When I was in high school I like to get to first or 2nd plateau and ride around town on my bike listening to music on my MP3 player.
- Trasmatta 3y ago
  3rd and 4th plateaus are so far beyond 2nd plateau too. One again, would not recommend.
ladzoppelin 3y ago
Wow, this comment made me confused as I thought you were talking about DMT so I searched and ended up in a redit talking about "what drug should I do Dph,dxm or DMT" The ignorance about drugs these days is mind blowing considering the available info. I would post a link to redit message but its not worth it. Seriously the first 3 replies are the most ignorant destructive replies I have seen in a while.
- Trasmatta 3y ago
  My hot take is that you shouldn't take any of them. Especially DXM and DPH. But even DMT, the things you can learn on drugs, you can learn on other, safer ways.
sedatk 3y ago
I remember reading stories about people who took a substance (can't remember which) and lived entire imaginary lives in a fantasy world in real-time: that is for years, they go to school, have kids, go to work, etc., until they wake up and it would have been only 15 minutes in actual life.
- 3y ago

grogenaut 3y ago

After my mom's stroke she basically lost the concept of time. Apparently it's relatively common. Kids don't get the concept of time until an age, and you can lose it. Amazing how much you need it how things fall apart in this modern life without it. Didn't help that she decided to use a 2017 calendar in 2018, I questioned my sanity as I unraveled the mess. It very much impacted her life. About the only good thing was that she'd just eat at any time we wanted. "I could eat" became the answer always, not that it wasn't before. Woman loved a good scallop and was quick with a fork if you tried to take hers.

ryanSrich 3y ago
How does that work in practice? She can read a clock right? So would she just not remember to look at the clock to see the time? Genuinely curious.
- haswell 3y ago
  My brother is dealing with a TBI, and in a nutshell, it’s exactly that. The reason most of us glance at the clock is because we feel the passage of time and wonder what time it must be now. He doesn’t always feel time passing, and he could go hours before it even occurs to him to look at his phone or a clock. He relies on timers and reminders to keep things on track.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    I think there is a lot of promising tech to help people out with this stuff. Just having your phone prompt you when you need to do stuff. I saw Google maps (perhaps recently) added a feature where you tell it the time you need to be somewhere and it will notify you when it's time to leave.
    - haswell 3y ago
      He uses his iPhone extensively to do things like this. I recently learned that the native Calendar app can do the same thing for scheduled appointments that have a location specified. Reminders can be set for things like: (can set multiple) "30 minutes before travel time" or "Time to leave", etc. One thing he's struggled with is establishing the habits to set up these kinds of tools. There are often other issues associated with TBI and memory/new habit formation have been a challenge. Needs reminders for the reminders. He's determined to find the right combination of tools/processes so he can create a guide to help other people use their current tools to manage this aspect of their lives. The potential is definitely there.

512 3y ago

I feel I have a slightly "time-warped" memory. I often can't tell whether something was two months or over a year ago, for instance. I believe this to be caused by depression, as I've seen many similar reports online. Life assumes a sort of "flow" state, as you don't care enough to pay attention to things. It affects my memory in general as well.

swells34 3y ago
I have something very similar. When I get very focused on something, you can ask me what I had for breakfast, and I'll vividly remember and recount making an omelette; but that was three weeks ago. This goes for pretty much anything, even very unique events. I can remember it well, but I can only place it within about an 8 month period, even if it was just a week or two ago. I'm quite nervous about ever having to be in a court proceeding, giving a deposition or anything like that where specific dates are required; it just escapes me how people remember this stuff.
deleted 3y ago
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lakpan 3y ago
Is it possible that you've fallen into a habitual life? I have almost a black hole in my memory from 3-year period that I spent mostly at home. After that period, I can look at a photo in my gallery and know almost the exact date when it happened. Or vice-versa, knowing where I was on a specific period 7 years ago.
devjab 3y ago
With ADHD this is pretty much a thing. If you also get the “funzies” where you sometimes “relieve” a moment in a way that is so real that you end up speaking out loud in response to the relived memory, you should probably consider getting it looked into. Especially if your depression isn’t a “real” depression. What I mean by that isn’t to minimise it’s impact or how it feels, but I was once in a depression group where I just didn’t fit in. I was in it because I had been suicidal, so, well I obviously wasn’t doing ok, but unlike the other members of the group I could get up in the morning just fine. Long story short, I was diagnosed with ADHD to which depression and anxiety are often “friends” when it isn’t treated. And by treated I don’t only mean medicated. Anyway, if this isn’t you, then I’m sorry for derailing you a bit.

fortran77 3y ago

As someone who plays in community orchestras, I've never known any violist to have the ability to perceive time.

tomcam 3y ago
Ba dum dum tsss

alexey-salmin 3y ago

Reads like another chapter of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat"

GistNoesis 3y ago

What about solitude, solitary confinement, social isolation, with respect to the perception of time ? How much of it is link to a physiological injury like inflammation vs loss of markers ?

rabite 3y ago
I was imprisoned on false charges and tortured by the United States government. A precedent-setting appeal freed me, but not before I spent a long time in solitary confinement, much of that on a hunger strike. Solitary confinement causes brain damage so severe it is visible on a CT scan. The area that it damages is the hippocampus, which is key of in the perception of time and spatial memory. I can still perceive time on an immediate basis, in terms of music and speech, but a year goes by in a haze. Short seconds, like walking into another room, seem to pass slowly against the rapid progress of my thoughts which are now unanchored to the immediate physical realm and I forget what I went to the other room for if there's not a persistent reminder such as hunger or the need to use the toilet to remind me. I write what I plan to do into a notes app before I move anywhere, even one room over in my own house. Living a normal life has become impossible.
- GistNoesis 3y ago
  Thanks for your feedback. I feel sorry for you. Malnutrition probably didn't help with respect to the CT injuries. Does in-person conversation help to stabilize your flow of time ? Can piggybacking on someone else (like a helper, or group activities) help you recover your own sense of longer term coherency by synchronizing your flow with others ?
  - rabite 3y ago
    > Does in-person conversation help to stabilize your flow of time? No, it makes it a lot harder. It's easiest on a short-term basis if I constantly echo a phrase over and over in my head, like an internal metronome. I can't do that and talk at the same time. Nothing really helps, it is actual physical damage to your brain and nobody knows how to fix it. The best thing is to just accept that your brain is really broken and start finding mnemonics and workarounds to get by.

LoganDark 3y ago

I don't have much difficulty perceiving time in general, but I have a dissociative disorder that can really, really fuck with it: Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. (It's not an "identity disorder", but a "dissociative identity" disorder, the clinical name for the so-called "personalities".) When one of the other "personalities" is out in my place, that length of time will be lost to me. As if I just teleported forward. Things that happened before the event will feel more recent than they really were, and things that happened during the event, I won't remember at all. Because those memories weren't mine to begin with - they are memories of someone else that lives in my head. This results in a lot of very fun situations, but it mostly results in me losing big chunks of my life and not knowing things that just so happen to have been told to someone other than me. (I didn't forget, those memories just belong to someone else!) I've also had some small number of dissociative episodes, which are even worse because I can get really extreme time dilation during the episode, but also phantom sensations like endless pain and suffering-- you get the idea. It can get really really fucked. I'm lucky not to have completely lost my sense of time, but having to figure out a bunch of identity stuff every single day is very Fun. Sometimes it's actually fun and other times it's the big existential crisis that never ends.

unobatbayar 3y ago
I truly understand you. I've researched into this for a long time but found that it's not currently curable. Have you tried healing your trauma? Please share anything you've tried or done to cope with DID.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  My trauma really isn't healable, on top of just getting a healthy dose of Fresh trauma a few weeks ago. Honestly, DID isn't meant to be cured and coping sort of just consists of accepting that this is your life now. Now, I did a lot more than that because I encouraged plurality and allowed each identity to express themselves and have fun lives, and that's honestly probably the best coping that could have been done. Living life as multiple is just different. Some people are able to integrate and become just one person, but I would rather die than do that. Being multiple is my identity. Without that, I'd be lost.

et1337 3y ago

I think it's interesting that HN in particular seems to be fascinated by brain injuries, myself included. Losing brain functionality is a scary thought for people who enjoy using their brains all day. edit: also I find my HN comment history to be a really good check on my perception of time. It's weird to see the random thoughts I wrote out in my down time. I ALWAYS think, "wow that was 3 months ago?"

eastbound 3y ago
I really think we’ll discover that programming is toxic for the brain. Mechanisms: - Intense loss of memory, inability to remember names and faces, since everything can be written down all the time, - Periods of flow interrupted by compilation time, change of topic (looking at the web), within a lot of stress (want to deliver the feature, excited to set up the architecture), - Long hours working, sometimes into the night, thus grave loss of sleep, - Sedentary intellectual-only work, no use of the body, and more importantly no use of facial features, no smile, no talking for hours and even years long. - Eventually, social networks top up all those with intense context-switching and dopamine addiction, Leading to early onset of Alzheimer, or, as we’ll call it, Eastbound Disease. Of course that doesn’t have to be your fate! But programming takes you into that slippery slope very easily. To anyone downloading: Please argument too, because I don’t understand, thank you.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  I don't think any of these are exclusive to programming. You can fit in any addictive activity into this template.
- number6 3y ago
  Since nobody answered you: intriguing argument but that's not a byproduct of programming but of alienation. You don't have to live this way even if you love programming.
lm28469 3y ago
> Losing brain functionality is a scary thought for people who enjoy using their brains all day. I'm fairly sure people outside of HN enjoy using their brains too, I'd say the vast majority of people do

dclowd9901 3y ago

> Six years after my recovery, my memory overall is not as sharp as it was before my illness. I use to-do lists to keep myself on track. I triple-check the rehearsal dates on emails I send my students to make sure I haven’t listed the wrong day or month, although sometimes mistakes still slip through. I also sometimes struggle to remember how far back events in my past happened. I’ll catch myself wondering if I had the oil in my car changed three months ago or a year ago. But every time I take my viola out of its case, I feel grateful to be able to think like a musician again. Probably a testament more to the savant like intelligence of a classically trained musician than an objective description of someone’s stunted recovery. For me, I exercise the same extra work to keep up with my day to day, though to my knowledge, have never had a traumatic brain injury.

thunkle 3y ago

I tried a 5mg THC edible last week (new user) and I lost my short term memory for about 50 hours. It was hell because I could still remember some things but my visual memory was 0, so it was like I was always coming out of a dark cloud that's 15 seconds behind me, but perceiving now in full clarity. It really messed with my perception of time. I wonder how many times I thought: "what's going on... ok you lost your short term memory... but now is so clear... but it won't be soon... how long has this been happening... " I cried 40 hours in because I didn't know if it would ever come back. Luckily it did and I'm here a week later with hopefully little scars.

TheCapeGreek 3y ago
That's... an interesting reaction. I'm sorry you had to go through it. What's notable for me is that this happened at such a low dose. Maybe there's something more to it in terms of interaction or reaction in your body?
j16sdiz 3y ago
This syndrome is common, but 50 hours is unusually long.
- thunkle 3y ago
  It was 50 hours til I felt 100% normal. The bulk of it was in the first several hours.
rexpop 3y ago
This is my experience with THC and it's definitely anxiety inducing! A good reason to avoid the drug. I imagine that with the proper mindset, and in the proper setting, short term memory usage might be less important or even a hindrance. I could see this as a boon when playing silly games, goofing off in the ocean, or maybe doing something akin to talk therapy, but for anything I currently enjoy doing, holding onto a thought and following it to logical conclusions is a primary necessity.
imperialdrive 3y ago
Very similar happened to me smoking the first time. Mostly due to not knowing limit. Looking back I'd say it was like ~5x what would have done the job. To this day I need to carefully dose. Awesome time vs anxious time is not far apart dose-wise. Glhf!

xwdv 3y ago

This could be liberating or terrifying. If you don’t notice time passing, does it feel like you’re just in some eternal existence beyond time, where you have all the time in the world? Or do you just instantly come to a realization some day that time is up and you’re dead?

agumonkey 3y ago

I don't know how common it is but some event removed this ability in me for a month. No "injury" per se just some strange brain changes.

Nursie 3y ago

"The shape of each synaesthete's year is different. (Image based on an original illustration by Carol Steen)" Doesn't everyone have a weird, slightly wiggly loop in their head that represents the year? I don't stand in the middle of mine as described in the article, I view it like it's a diagram on a screen, and we move round it like game pieces on a board. The first six months of the year are comparatively compressed, with July and August largest the presence (they are on the left, roughly between ESE and NE). Or I did, I haven't thought about it for a while, I think it might be one of the many things that having a pocket do-everything device has down-emphasised. Either that or moving hemispheres and changing the mapping between months and seasons has altered the way I think about it. I always figured that at some formative point in my childhood I saw some sort of representation of a year like this and just internalised it fully.

hnbad 3y ago
In my experience, usually when you read in an article how people marvel at something someone does and you think "doesn't everyone do that?" the answer is no, they don't. No, I've never thought of a year as having a shape and neither does anyone I know. If prompted to draw something they'd likely go with a clock-like circle but that's because that's how it's usually visualized (I think every kindergarden or elementary school has a picture showing the four seasons as clock-wise segments of a circle somewhere) but it's not how they "think" of it. If you told them to point to "September" they wouldn't point in a direction, they'd wonder what the heck you asked them to do. I spent most of my life thinking the idea of thoughts being a "voice in your head" was a metaphor. Surely people who don't suffer from hallucinations don't literally have a voice in their head vocalizing their thoughts in full sentences, right? Thoughts are just nebulous "vibes" that need to be manifested into speech intentionally if you want to express them, right? Turns out no, I'm the weird one. Most people do have a voice in their head and it's usually only considered a problem when there's more than one or you don't like what it's saying. I also spent most of my life thinking people don't really can see an object they imagine as if it were present and seeing things that aren't there means you're hallucinating. But again, no, I just have aphantasia and there are degrees of "visual imagination" but most people can indeed conjure up somewhat lifelike images (or at least relatively "hi-res renderings") in their mind, often with sound and smell (no, not just vibes, the actual perception of hearing and smelling) as well. I also always thought "habit" was a fanciful way of saying you condition yourself to do one thing after another, like always putting the tooth paste in the same place after putting some on the brush head. Something that becomes easier after a while because you know the steps and can follow them like a mental to-do list. But no, many people can literally make themselves go through entire chains of actions without having to make deliberate decisions to do so at every point, just by repeating the same cycle of trigger & action enough times. And for them it sticks, too. They don't just do it for a few months and then phase out when they stop putting in the effort because it happens unconsciously. They don't get distracted by an intrusive thought halfway and then forget what they were doing. They don't have to "block the main thread" to do a habit, they have "userland background processes" in addition to the "system processes" like breathing and walking. I used to think everyone had to do a conscious check on themselves to determine whether they need to go to the toilet, have a snack, drink something or get warm/cold before the emergency alarm kicks in and tells you have to do so right now or else. Again, no, most people somehow are just aware of that, like the desperation meters in the Sims games. If you ask them if they'd like something to eat and they aren't urgently hungry they can just tell you and don't actively need to think about it. Oh and related to this article: I used to think nobody actually "felt" time really. It's just something that happens and as you grow older you learn that certain events or tasks take up certain amounts of time and when you know what time it was earlier and what has been done or happened since you'll have a good guess what time it is now and you can recalibrate by checking the time in between so your estimates get better. Nope! Tons of people can literally tell you the approximate time without wasting mental capacity on keeping track of all of that. They're able to do a thing, figure that they've already spent half an hour on something they expected to take fifteen minutes and call it quits rather than come out the other end six hours later wondering where the time went -- and when you tell them this is what it's like for you and they say they know what you mean that's only because they're talking about things they do while "in the flow", not literally doing anything. There's a reason the neurodiversity movement uses the term "neurodiversity": it's not about individual clusters of neurodivergence. A person is neurodivergent or neurotypical. But people are neurodiverse. Always. Some people are time blind, some people have aphantasia, some people have both, most have neither. But across a non-trivial sample size you'll always have a diversity of neurotypes and everyone will be "weird" at least in some way, even if they share the same diagnostic label (or lack thereof). Heck, if you factor in enough variables, divergence is the norm rather than the exception.

growingkittens 3y ago

I have an early childhood brain injury, and I don't perceive time passing. I never knew time. I took a medication (abilify) that made me aware of the passage of time. It was excruciating, I had to stop. My brain had no framework for handling the input.

menacingly 3y ago

Brain issues are always so fascinating. The subjective experience is to diagnose a faulty sensor using the sensor. The brain that both I and the author agree seems to be acting up also wrote this article. Did it mess with your ability to perceive time, or alter your recollection of how you once perceived time, or alter your ability to assess your perception of time, or activate a hidden "too aware of second-order time phenomena" organ

Name_Chawps 3y ago
It seems like the altered time perception caused behaviors in the moment like interrupting others that can be verified by others, so probably this is not an issue with recall/ability to assess perception of time.

7373737373 3y ago

The following is not really related to time perception per se, but a fascinating look into memory: "A REVIEW OF 80 YEARS OF MEMORIES INDUCTED BY ELECTRICAL BRAIN STIMULATION" https://web.archive.org/web/20200126062547/http://gpe.ups-tlse.fr/memstim.php https://web.archive.org/web/20200126062547/http://gpe.ups-tl... (Source data for this paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763416306820 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976341...)

rafaelvasco 3y ago

Time, as we perceive it doesn't really exist. It's much more complicated than what we perceive, as it should be otherwise we would not be able to live in society. Our brains create the apparent linearity of time to give us a sense of progression. But it doesn't really work that way. In my opinion, no evidence here, we could even communicate with someone that lived in the past. Because that's not the absolute past. That person lives still in another layer of reality. As such there's no such thing as past and future. It's just a construct from our brains. That's my view. Not affirming anything.

dghughes 3y ago

I'm surprised we can even do anything. The delay seeing something until the signal gets to my brain then to process it and then to act takes ages. We all live in the past by about 30ms to 120ms.

picadores 3y ago

Could a smart-watch based interrupt and reminder of "basic overview task" work as a time-keeping prosthesis?

reiichiroh 3y ago

I am experiencing hallucination and memory issues for the first time after having a cardiac event very recently at a relatively young 45. On top of one eye being nearsighted and the other being far sighted, the closest I would describe this is ocular and mental auto correc/complete powered by low horse power gpt.

jaakl 3y ago

I remember serious time slowdown - eg distortion of sound pitch, just like with slowed down grammaphone with overuse of cannabis back in the university times. It was interesting, but not pleasant. But I guess thats quite common thing for many drugs. Later on I have thought-trained myself to think of time of something arbitrary - I can more-less think of future and past to anytime I wish to. So distant pleasant memories are just as 5 min ago, and something unpleasant is consciously very far in past. It is like being able to time-travel, and it can be quite inspiring and revealing thing. Can be confusing also, I can see and feel myself as 25 years younger (as 20yr old) anytime, but the others probably dont.

fallingfrog 3y ago

The last paragraph where she describes her life six years later is pretty much exactly what adhd is like. “I use to-do lists to keep myself on track. I triple-check the rehearsal dates on emails I send my students to make sure I haven’t listed the wrong day or month, although sometimes mistakes still slip through. I also sometimes struggle to remember how far back events in my past happened. I’ll catch myself wondering if I had the oil in my car changed three months ago or a year ago.” I’ve always regarded the ability to remember when the last oil change or when you registered your car was to be some kind of exotic magic trick that everyone but me can do, like I’m living in a world full of savants with abilities I’ll never have. My biggest problem on the job is that I don’t really have any sense of how things take; I work on something for as long as it stays interesting or until it’s done. My project time estimates are hilariously bad. I have no idea how long it took me to do something after the fact, until I get congratulated or reprimanded by my boss. For me, it’s kind of like being colorblind and being told I’m stupid my whole life because I can’t separate the red m&ms from the brown ones. They’re all brown to me!