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

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#41

Post by wongarsu » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 12:24 PM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #32

IAmNotAFix wrote: post #26

Are we supposed to have non-movie-like memories about the past? I mean, other than remembering "knowledge" such as sentences or dates or numbers or geography, etc, it seems that all memory about my "actual life" is movie-like.

I remember both moments and "movies". Some memories are more like pictures, usually accompanied with emotions. Other memories are more like movies, where I visualize the events unfold. I seldom remember what I dream, but when I do it's usually right before I wake up in the morning, and it feels like being in a movie. I often get aware that I'm dreaming and can control the movie (dream) to some extent. I can then get…

I experience movie-like dreams, but not movie-like memories. Not just the imagery (which is obvious, I'm aphantastic), but my memories aren't episodic at all. I have a sense of happened-after relations, but those are different from experiencing things one after another.

Somewhat related, while I can't visualize memories I do visualize dreams. That would leave me to believe that dreams are fundamentally different (see also how the body has to seize many motor functions during dreaming, but we can use all of them during remembering).

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#42

Post by wongarsu » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 12:28 PM UTC

Drakim wrote: post #34

orbifold wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered this during meditation in high school: Do people actually see things when they close their eyes? The whole “you are at a beach, there is a gentle breeze...” never did anything for me. I can remember colors, relative positions, even how a specific place looked overall fairly well, but I don’t see anything.

You likely have Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia As for your question, yes! I don't need to actually close my eyes, I can think about certain things and see a vivid image of it deep inside of my mind. If you need something to compare it to, can you actually hear music in your "mind" when you think about a song? It's kinda like that.

Anectotally, aphantasia seems highly correlated with reading HN (or probably programmers in general). HN threads about aphantasia-related topics always have lots of people with aphantasia, while these people make up a much smaller proportion in for example reddit threads about the same topic.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#43

Post by davidn20 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 12:36 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…

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.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#44

Post by xwdv » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 12:46 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #30

andai wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't do that when we're awake I started using a timer about ten years ago for mundane tasks (getting done a chunk of unpleasant work, or for cooking) and these days I'll get up from my desk to go check on the oven right before the timer rings. It works regardless of the length of the timer, and even when I don't know exactly how many minutes it is (twisty analog oven dial). I don't consciously know how much tim…

If someone asks me the time I'll often respond without looking "about 2.30". Then after digging out my phone check and see it's actually "2.35".

Your perception of time is off, you are perceiving time to be passing slower than it actually is. Right now it only seems like 5 minutes, but over time these error minutes will accumulate and you will feel like you have lived less life than you actually have lived in real time.

If you did not know how old you were, one day you might be asked to guess, and think you are 63, but then be told the truth and come to the chilling realization you are actually 82 and near death. That is the danger of lagging time perception.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#45

Post by eloisius » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:07 PM UTC

andai wrote: post #29

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…

> We can't do that when we're awake I started using a timer about ten years ago for mundane tasks (getting done a chunk of unpleasant work, or for cooking) and these days I'll get up from my desk to go check on the oven right before the timer rings. It works regardless of the length of the timer, and even when I don't know exactly how many minutes it is (twisty analog oven dial). I don't consciously know how much tim…

I have the exact opposite sense of time. I'm frequently several minutes late to meetings because I've completely lost track of time. I'm very cue-dependent, and with this everything-at-home lifestyle we've transitioned to, I often have split-second confusion that I'm just having lunch in the middle of the day and have to go back to work in a minute and not go take a shower like it's after dinner.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#46

Post by haolez » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:40 PM UTC

When I was young, I received a serious blow to my head while playing soccer that broke my skull and caused all sorts of issues at the time. I've managed a full recovery, but in the days following the accident, I lost my intuition of time. It's difficult to explain: I knew, logically, that I had lunch before I had dinner - and I had memory of doing both - but I couldn't "feel" that lunch was before dinner. It's pretty hard to explain and it was pretty weird to experience, but this symptom faded away after a couple of days.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#47

Post by Aperocky » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:41 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…

Yeah I had similar experiences.

If I want to wake up really early for something I think is important, even if I stay up late, I just need to tell myself to wake up at $time and it works.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#48

Post by hackinthebochs » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:42 PM UTC

notRobot wrote: post #4

Memory is a crazy thing. What I find particularly interesting is that some people recall memories in first person, and others in third person. Baffling.

All my childhood memories are in the third person. But I'm not sure if its due to the influence of pictures from those eras influencing how I visualize the memory or that its intrinsically third-person.

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#49

Post by polytely » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

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 to provide an alibi. It feels like a lot of day to day memories don't get 'time-stamped' at all.

I always thought this mainly had to do with ADD related working memory problems, but maybe it's more of an episodic memory problem?

Re: 'Time Cells' Discovered in Human Brains

#50

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

lexicality wrote: post #37

I would be very interested to see a study about how these cells function under ADHD, because as I'm sure any sufferer would tell you - our time perception is very very weird.

My experience is that it is much more difficult to focus on any individual task, but much easier to enter a 'flow' state with ADHD.

If I can manage to do 'thing a', I find that often, all the world falls away - regardless of what the thing is.

I also have a theory, completely unfounded and out of my own ass, that ADHD and other similar issues are just part of the spectrum that is autism. Any scientist want to confirm my personal belief?