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A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

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Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#141

Post by Nursie »

hnbad wrote: post #120
Nursie wrote: post #96

"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 compresse…

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…

I mean yeah, that was my reaction upon reading this - they're describing me or at least something similar. I had never considered that unusual before.

My year goes anticlockwise too, now that you've mentioned clocks...

(I realise now I'm commenting on an article someone else linked, not the subject article - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8248589.stm )

Yes, people are very different. A friend recently told me that they, similarly, have no internal monologue, and seem to have aphantasia. Other friends are there on facebook wishing their internal monologue would just shut the hell up sometimes. Mine goes away pretty much only when I'm busy doing something.

Brains are fascinating and it's interesting to discover just how different people are.

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#142

Post by rafaelvasco »

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.

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#144

Post by coldtea »

mistermann wrote: post #140
coldtea wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that be terrifying? After learning it, it would still be the same exact world as was before we learned about it.

That would require "learning it" to have zero persistence in any form would it not? How might one know such a thing?

Not sure what you're asking. What is "that" which would require "'learning it' to have zero persistence in any form'"?

What I meant is, even if we all learn that everybody in the world has "such disorders" and that "there are things none of us allow ourselves to perceive", what would the objective change be to make this "teriffying"?

"There's a killer out to get you" or "you have X disease which will have those symptoms" is terrifying.

"There are things that you don't know, and that you as a species can't even perceive" is at best amusing.

This sudden knowledge doesn't change anything that's happening or makes anything that happened before more frightening, does it?

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#145

Post by ProllyInfamous »

abrookewood wrote: post #42
js2 wrote: post #19

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 runner…

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_Mistoo...

As long as we're discussing Dr. Sacks, I just read his short story (part of same-titled book) "An Anthropologist on Mars." The titles derive from Dr. Grandin Temple's perception of being high-functioning autist in academia/husbandry; she is best-known for re-designing slaughterhouse shutes, able to "see" as animals do.

Her entire story left me, a spectrum-kiddo, grasping for what "real" even is.

The thing that struck me as her "most unhuman" aspect [but with which I can relate, self-inflictedly]: Dr. Grandin doesn't understand most human social customs, so from a young age vowed to never enter into a romantic relationship.

She considers this entirely a waste of time, and lives to work.

Highly recommend Dr. Sacks many books/collections, may he RIP:

[I'm just a fleshbag]: Man Who Mistook Wife for Hat

[LGB / growing up]: Uncle Tungsten

[Parkinsonianisms]: Awakenings

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#146

Post by Kye »

vik0 wrote: post #135
coldtea wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always had a peculiar, extremely elastic relationship with time, which I do perceive, only it's wildly all over the place, day in day out; a "moment" could fold hours into an eyeblink, or it could make split seconds last an eternity and a half. A tidy calendar, reminders for basically everything, and setting up "mental tripwires"† is the only way I found to be any sort of reliable. All quite common in ADD/ADHD…

Self diagnoses (and diagnoses over the internet) are pretty harmful in a society where many people think they have every mental/physical disorder just because they have a few (of the many) symptoms associated with one (or many) disorders One might even argue that the labeling aspect of a certain disorder (particularly a mental one) by a "professional" to not be particularly helpful too in addressing ones problems

If you compare notes and find mitigations/strategies used by people with diagnoses helps, then it hardly matters for all but one practical purpose. If you need a diagnosis for disability support, that's another matter. It's sometimes more trouble than benefit from what I've heard.

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#147

Post by [deleted] »

GlumWoodpecker wrote: post #110
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flow happens to at least a lot of runners to be fair though. At certain distance when I'm running, it becomes very pleasurable, like you are above everything.

Also known as "runner's high": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurobiological_effects_of_phy...

[deleted]

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#148

Post by ekanes »

js2 wrote: post #19

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 runner…

Wow. Interesting connection between "trouble perceiving time" (negative) and "flow state" (usually positive).

People with ADHD also have those two traits, perhaps giving further evidence that they come as a package.

Across the broader population, I wonder if one could increase flow state access by removing reminders of time. Casinos do this, I think.

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#149

Post by haswell »

JCharante wrote: post #105
haswell wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now I feel bad. I had an ex who would always lose track of time and I wasn’t understanding enough (being late by several hours and forgetting important things like her first chance at a covid shot, or getting lost while driving and having spent an hour driving around the neighborhood without realizing how long she’d been lost for). Timers make a lot of sense, if you can remember to set them.

I’ve gained a lot of empathy for folks dealing with this as I’ve seen my brother’s struggles up close. I definitely didn’t understand the dynamics before.

One of the things we’ve talked about is how otherwise “normal” he seems to most people, and the problems this causes. The symptoms aren’t as obvious as wearing a cast on your broken leg, or having severe speech issues, etc. and as a result, people are more likely to get frustrated or not understand when the symptoms spill over and affect other people (being late, forgetting things, etc).

Re: A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time

#150

Post by Kye »

hnbad wrote: post #120
Nursie wrote: post #96

"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 compresse…

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…

I never got all the "don't worry about it, time travel is complicated" in sci-fi. Do people really have that much trouble with it? Or large distances in space, for that matter.

And it turns out, yes, I'm weird for being able to keep and resolve multiple timelines (and not get hung up on paradoxes), and it actually is weird that I can easily comprehend vast cosmic distances.

I had to resist saying "it's just two adjacent timelines offset by an hour" a few times with the recent time change.

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