Seeing Time: Time-Space Synaethesia

Time-Space SynaethesiaOne of my Facebook friends reported today that he would like time to go faster- something that most of us hope for from time to time. His friend then jokingly suggested that he change the shutter speed settings on his camera. His time question got me thinking about the puzzle of time and how each person perceives time differently. My personal idea, which is by no means unique to me, has always been that the older you get, the relatively faster time seems. A year in the life of a first grader is a lot longer than the year in the life of a 90-year-old for example.

I just read an article today about synaesthesia, which is the mixing of the senses. The article introduced the idea of time-space synaesthesia which causes people to perceive time in circular patterns or different shapes; for example, someone might visualize a month as a circle in their mind’s eye or a year as an extended treadmill configuration.

According to David Brang, those who experience time-space synaesthesia may also “actually experience the calendar projected out into the real world”.

Time-space synsaethesia may be the result of over-active spatial processing. Dr. Simner who is at the University of Edinburough, says that there are “extra pathways” that light up when FMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) is used to scan the brains of those with time-space synsaethesia.

Others speculate that there might be quite an advantage for those with time-space synaesthesia in that they can recall events from the past much better than the average population and that they can actually visualize upcoming dates on their calendars.

Interestingly enough, the two articles I read about the syndrome cited experts who differed in their opinions of how common it was. One article guesstimated that approximately 2% of the population were among those that could “see time” and another claimed that it was very common.

Time-space synaesthesia is just the tip of the ice-berg when it comes to synaesthesia and is caused by a  linking of two or more parts of the sensory cortex. Other examples includes seeing the individual letters of the alphabet as certain colors and becoming uncomfortable when the letters are presented in different colors than how you perceive them or those who have the ability to see music.