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posted by cmn32480 on Monday December 12 2016, @02:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the perception-differential dept.

The Atlantic has an article about people with a type of synesthesia which causes them to see time around them.

The English polymath Francis Galton first described calendar forms in 1880, and the phenomenon has been rarely studied since. But Vilayanur Ramachandran, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego who has been studying synesthesia for a long time, has been slowly amassing and studying people with this odd perceptual quirk.

He met one such person, a 25-year-old woman named Emma, a year ago. Her calendar is a hula hoop, which stretches horizontally in front of her and touches her chest at one point—always December 31st, no matter the actual time of year. Emma uses her calendar to organize her life, attaching events to the various months and zooming around the hoop to access them.

The hoop is anchored to her body; it doesn't move if she tilts or rotates her head. "Obviously, this is a construct in her head, not a real hula hoop stuck to her chest," says Ramachandran. But if she turns her head to the right, the left side of the calendar became fuzzier, as it would be if it was an actual physical object. More bizarrely, the memories that she had appended to those months also became indistinct and harder to recall.


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @06:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @06:12PM (#440485)

    I had some prescription medication once that made me see geometric-tiling and/or kaleidoscope-like patterns whenever a sudden sound such as a door slamming was heard. Odd, especially the first time it happened. Also, the doc didn't see that symptom listed as a side-effect, and was also puzzled.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by tynin on Monday December 12 2016, @08:43PM

    by tynin (2013) on Monday December 12 2016, @08:43PM (#440542) Journal

    You should always avoid ascribing symptoms to new meds for at least a month+ after you last ingested any hallucinogen. Indeed, I would avoid taking a hallucinogen when starting in new meds in general.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @10:05PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @10:05PM (#440581)

      No, it wasn't extra 'funny stuff' on the side.