'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains • Hacker News Board

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#51

Post by scollet » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #40

nihilius wrote: post #5

Just want to mention here that people exist wich can’t recall a memory trough mental images. It’s called aphantasia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

I can't really relate to the article's description of episodic memory. I'm also aphantastic. I wonder if there is a correlation or if it's just coincidence. These things are surprisingly little studied, for example aphantasia has only really seen scientific interest in the last ten years. We all seem to assume that everyone's experience is the same as ours, only slowly discovering how untrue that really is. Even some…

This has been particularly interesting to me because I can usually only relate to system design in software visually.

It works wonders for me personally to see code blocks as literal blocks that do X and connect to other blocks via graph edges. Then I pseudocode what I want and replace.

Whiteboarding is a bit difficult if I can't visualize transformations or stores of data in some way, or if I can't see a theoretical big picture for a particular function.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#52

Post by ekanes » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

polytely wrote: post #49

I wonder if this is something that is going wrong in my brain lol. I have a hard time remembering when exactly things happened (to figure out in what year I started school I basically have to walk backwards through my memories keeping track of some kind of time marker like seasons, like traversing a linked list). I often joke that if I ever was a suspect in a criminal investigation it would be very difficult for me t…

I have this too, and would describe it exactly the same. I think this is common with ADD.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#53

Post by elliekelly » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 2:04 PM UTC

davidn20 wrote: post #43

yesenadam wrote: post #8

I guess this is a different thing, but... When I was a kid I read a book that said if before you go to sleep you think "I will wake up at Xam" (whatever time you want) then you wake up at exactly that time. Which is pretty weird! We can't do that when we're awake. It actually works, and I've never needed an alarm clock. For a few ultra-important days I used one, like catching a plane, but I was always awake before it…

Gary Halbert, one of the best copywriters of all time, uses a time method to check if his mind was sharp. He will guess at how much time has passed without looking at a clock. The closer he was to the real time the better.

That's interesting. I thought I had read that older people perceive time more slowly than younger people but I wonder if that can be overcome by keeping our sense of time-telling "calibrated" by periodically checking our accuracy.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#54

Post by yesenadam » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 2:04 PM UTC

mbStavola wrote: post #24

yesenadam wrote: post #8

I guess this is a different thing, but... When I was a kid I read a book that said if before you go to sleep you think "I will wake up at Xam" (whatever time you want) then you wake up at exactly that time. Which is pretty weird! We can't do that when we're awake. It actually works, and I've never needed an alarm clock. For a few ultra-important days I used one, like catching a plane, but I was always awake before it…

There is definitely something to this. A similar phenomenon occurs on public transit-- waking up at (or just before) your stop. I found that if I've taken the trip at least once, I can wake up pretty much exactly when I need to. Nearly every other frequent commuter I've discussed this with has a similar experience. I used to believe it was related to subtle audio/visual cues while unconscious, but it might just be a…

Yeah, does seem more likely it's my brain knowing the time fairly accurately from the early morning light levels, bird song, traffic noises, temperature, smells in the air etc, and other cues I'm not consciously aware of, than that I have a timer, accurate to a few minutes over 9 or 10 hours, in my body.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#55

Post by skocznymroczny » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

yesenadam wrote: post #8

I guess this is a different thing, but... When I was a kid I read a book that said if before you go to sleep you think "I will wake up at Xam" (whatever time you want) then you wake up at exactly that time. Which is pretty weird! We can't do that when we're awake. It actually works, and I've never needed an alarm clock. For a few ultra-important days I used one, like catching a plane, but I was always awake before it…

When I was a kid, we used to have a radio/tape/CD player with a digital clock on it. Whenever I looked at it, as in whenever my body thought it would be a good idea to check the time, it was always something like 11:11 or 16:16.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#56

Post by secfirstmd » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

yesenadam wrote: post #8

I guess this is a different thing, but... When I was a kid I read a book that said if before you go to sleep you think "I will wake up at Xam" (whatever time you want) then you wake up at exactly that time. Which is pretty weird! We can't do that when we're awake. It actually works, and I've never needed an alarm clock. For a few ultra-important days I used one, like catching a plane, but I was always awake before it…

Haha, I know that's weird but actually I've noticed that myself happening a lot - thought I might be the only one! :)

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#57

Post by lathiat » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #53

davidn20 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gary Halbert, one of the best copywriters of all time, uses a time method to check if his mind was sharp. He will guess at how much time has passed without looking at a clock. The closer he was to the real time the better.

That's interesting. I thought I had read that older people perceive time more slowly than younger people but I wonder if that can be overcome by keeping our sense of time-telling "calibrated" by periodically checking our accuracy.

I’ve heard that story before and it was effectively centered on the fact that each year was a proportionally smaller part of your life as you get older.

But feels like it wouldn’t be hard for that long term sense of time to be fairly disconnected with a very short term one.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#58

Post by zabardasth » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

skocznymroczny wrote: post #55

yesenadam wrote: post #8

I guess this is a different thing, but... When I was a kid I read a book that said if before you go to sleep you think "I will wake up at Xam" (whatever time you want) then you wake up at exactly that time. Which is pretty weird! We can't do that when we're awake. It actually works, and I've never needed an alarm clock. For a few ultra-important days I used one, like catching a plane, but I was always awake before it…

When I was a kid, we used to have a radio/tape/CD player with a digital clock on it. Whenever I looked at it, as in whenever my body thought it would be a good idea to check the time, it was always something like 11:11 or 16:16.

Yes, I too am a fan of repdigits.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#59

Post by davidmurdoch » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

polytely wrote: post #49

I wonder if this is something that is going wrong in my brain lol. I have a hard time remembering when exactly things happened (to figure out in what year I started school I basically have to walk backwards through my memories keeping track of some kind of time marker like seasons, like traversing a linked list). I often joke that if I ever was a suspect in a criminal investigation it would be very difficult for me t…

I think that's normal and precisely the mechanism the article is referring to?

Not being able to recall the year something occurred if you don't reflect on that memory every so often seems "normal" as well.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#60

Post by yesenadam » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

skocznymroczny wrote: post #55

yesenadam wrote: post #8

I guess this is a different thing, but... When I was a kid I read a book that said if before you go to sleep you think "I will wake up at Xam" (whatever time you want) then you wake up at exactly that time. Which is pretty weird! We can't do that when we're awake. It actually works, and I've never needed an alarm clock. For a few ultra-important days I used one, like catching a plane, but I was always awake before it…

When I was a kid, we used to have a radio/tape/CD player with a digital clock on it. Whenever I looked at it, as in whenever my body thought it would be a good idea to check the time, it was always something like 11:11 or 16:16.

Maybe that's true, but when I hear people say they always look at their watches at 12:34 or such a thing, I suspect (because it never happened to me!) it's probably something akin to the Baader-Meinhof illusion, "where something that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards." There are many similar phenonema humans fall victim to, thanks to our cognitive biases - our brains not as good at certain things as we'd like to think.

You tend to only remember what seem those unusual times. And the more you freak out about it, and wonder what the hell's going on, the more you remember seeing them, and the more you look..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequ...