oh my god i'm kind of freaking out because i've experienced this my whole life and i never knew it was something that anyone else experienced or that it had a name, any time i've told people i can see time they look at me like i have three heads. my mind is blown right now woah....
@ProdXCheko hey! days of a week are like if a weekly planner was 3D w hills and valleys, months all lie linearly along a spiral of years that goes up and down and i always exist in the current loop, and all of time stretches in a line from behind me to my bottom left, around my front, and then to the right but it gets fuzzy about a foot to the right. the lines for years and all time are colored based on memories or associations that i have with those times. i know the written description doesn't make much sense, i wish i could attach a picture ive drawn!!
@@absolutelynot6086 i don't see it exactly like that, but i can visualize what u mean and i think people who don't see time can't even conceptualize this based on conversations ive had trying to explain it to people. ask ppl around u how they "see time", most will have no idea how to even answer that question, which is bonkers to me
@@judeliberatoscioli3400 can i add u in instagram or somewhere else, i would b v happy and thankful if i could get picture of what u explained, thnk a lot
I have this! my mind was blown when you showed the picture. I have a note on my phone from 2017 where I drew what time looks like for me to show my friend. I said "what does yours look like?" and she said "huh?" it's so cool to see that other people see it like this!
Honestly, it's not only fun and games. My time space synesthesia sometimes makes it hard for me to plan a lot of things in the future because it makes some things bigger than they are (think school, work ect) and breaks and relaxation time smaller. Although it does help me remember things that has happened and plans I have :)
@@kelkkammalayalamIdk if mine could help but, I do think I have some kind of SSS cuz mostly when I think or I "understand" I could just feel it. Its like a sudden flash of movement in my inner eyes that makes me feel like uh this makes total sense and what not. Well, its a conceptual SSS I guess. But its not all sunshine and rainbow though. I constantly struggle to understand how to explain some concept ot others because how I percieve it and I need to gruringly rearrange my thought to suit others
I have the same issue oO. And i thought everyone is like me.... i think thats a misconception of Synestesia.... Not everyone has it and thats a problem for the ones with it....
Yes, and it can also get in the way of mental arithmetic because the timeline has so many different proportions, corners, curves, subdivisions and changing POVs...
ALL my life i felt like no one else could do this it feels so good to know others are like this. When I see Time i see totally different configurations for Months, Days and Years . For example: Years, they flow horizontally on a 3d permeable number line from left to right categorized by decades....i was born in 1999 and obviously have no relocation of anything prior to my birth but i can literally visualize ever year back until the 1800's and further if necessary. another example is when i visualize the 80's decade. it consists of anything and any ideas related to the 80's.(pop culture, historic events, stories told by family and birthdays) are all attached to its corresponding year. Also i can go thru the 3d time number line. Right now in 2022 im inside the year facing the right which becomes my front pov. i can't see past the current year. it all just flows into your usual regular imagination and future gazing. The past feels documented the future seems like an intangible aspiration.
Okay let me get this straight doesn't All people visualize the years from left to right? Also for some reoson i see the first six month on my left and the latter months on the right. Even if i am on those months the position is fixed.If i am in February i see myself on the right but if it's September than i see myself on the left. Is it normal?
My timeline goes back to well before my birth. It's like a massive ribbon stretching to the back after a vast room. It starts to my left and has intersections at the years, decades and centuries. If you name a year like 500 AD, I automatically see where it is in my mental timeline.
My husband and I had an argument about this last night because I was curious what his calendar looks like and he didn't have one. I thought he was crazy! After some questioning on his part, we realized I may be unique one in my perceptions. The months of the year, days of the week, school grades, age, numbers, the alphabet, time, and family systems all have very distinct visual-spatial forms. My numbers look very close to the example shown in the video with 7-9 sloping upwards, 10 at the top, 11-15 sloping down, then turning up for 16-19 and peaking back up at 20. Of course, this isn't in 2D. Select numbers and letters have colors assigned as well.
Realizing that I have auditory visual synesthesia legitimately changed my life. I experience music and sound in mental images that are incredibly rich, vivid, and specific. This experience has always made it very difficult for me to express the way that im experiencing things. I never put the pieces together until I was talking to someone about a song and I said "this song sounds how this image looks" and they told me that sounds like synesthesia. I can never turn these sensory experiences off either. I still don't know how to put a lot of my internal experiences into words but even just having a name for the condition that I have has been a huge deal to me
@@SpeegBJ I thin it's a gift and a curse at the same time. I hang on to the past very much because it's very vivid, real and within my grasp. Future is unknown, the present is uncertain. Synesthesia and hypermnesia just make me ruminate on what is long gone. Music, smell, date and the emotions, thoughts, events etc is on my mind, really hard to eradicate.
My weeks are shaped like a capital letter "D" with the weekend on the straight part and M-F is on the round part but it is more swollen than a standard "D" in order to fit all of the days. My 24 hr day winds randomly up but in always the same shape, of course. My year is also in the shape of a "D" but it lies with the straight part North with the "belly" dropping Southward. It has the summer months on the straight part with a slight right-angled soft bend at Dec. 25th where it goes a bit sharper or straighter towards summer. My decades go along with the shape of my centuries which have no actual shape but form a bent and curvy line like an undone but rebent randomly coat hanger, but always bent the same way. I only differ from Ms. Malpas description in that my bends do not occur on 10 year intervals. They bend and curve at a variety of intervals and I doubt they have regular intervals. It would be something to sit down to figure out if they did because I am totally unaware of it if they do... But my jaw dropped when I heard what she was talking about because I had no idea that it, this time/space synaesthesia, was a "thing". I only found out recently though that not everyone sees it. I spent my whole life thinking most people "saw" time in some very solid way like this. Oh, I forgot the other difference. When time runs through me it goes through from west to east (my centuries do anyway) no matter which way I am standing. So it can pass through my back or my stomach or my sides. Mostly my sides though so I can point past to future. But always from West to East, (for the centuries anyway). Ha! It just occurred to me that it brings a whole new meaning to 3D for me! Thank you Ms. Malpas.
NSEW plays a big role in my maps also. My weeks are similar though more what I call eye shaped, with Sat and Sun (always on the West side going North to South) being the upper eyelid. Mon-Fri lower lid (East side going South to North) . My 24 hr clock is like an escalator. 1 am to 9 am going down, the rest going up (this is the only one without a NSEW) My year is slightly oval, with Dec/Jan at the top North. July/ Aug in the South. My past years are pretty boring. They loop over my left should in a ticker tape that runs in a crinkly line back like I'm trailing a long streamer . My daughter has this also. In the 1990's 20/20 did a bit on it and we both just about lost our minds. We had no idea it was a thing or had a name.
@Gerardo Berumen So your winter months per se, are o the straight part of the "D"? Do your months or weeks or hours in a day have any shape too? Or your number strings? I'm so curious...
So fun to hear from others with this silly and wonderful... ummm... "gift" I think we should call it. In writing that I just realized that It is one of the few things in the "world inside my own head" that 1) Has never changed in any way. 2) Has never been a bad thing in any way 3) that I don't think that it helps my memory of things since I have a fairly awful memory even though it seems like something like this would help memory recall... I could be totally wrong though in that maybe it actually does help my memory because otherwise it would be worse than it is now if I did not have Synaesthesia... Anyway, I think we need to have a World-Wide Synaesthesia League... We could call it Synaesthesists League Of the World... Acronym S.L.O.W. lol!
@@kennaortega3708 Very similar but not exactly the same. My maps are far more detailed than her's I think, and she doesn't have the NSEW element at all. But her grapheme synesthesia is way stronger than mine.
My concept of time starts in the centre and travels upward in a spiral. My synesthesia is the ability to feel things spatially with my senses. Also, when I hug or get close to certain people, I either hear a pleasant sound or shrill sound.
OMG! You just made me realize that when I hug people that I experience what it looks like inside them! Mostly what it looks like inside their mouths... especially when french kissing! Lol! I always thought it was peculiar to see that but had no frame of reference for what I was experiencing! Thank You for the insight! Pardon the pun!
you hear a sounds?! thats amazing!!!! wow. My year timeline goes backwards in a straight line behind me, from now till 2000 its on a super bright white background with red and orange years, the it suddenly turns left at 1999-1900 and become gradually more grey and muted (maybe bc of the lack of coloured photography?), 1800s becomes a monochromatic muted red colour, after that the timeline is sort of blank, with markers at key years that I can zoom into when I think about them specifically. Up until I discovered synesthesia I thought everyone saw time
I thought everyone saw time like this for 64 years; the age I discovered this. Your patterns are somewhat similar to mine. As a cultural historian this makes dates, centuries, and events a piece of cake to conjure up in my projects.
my one son can smell colors and also sees geometric shapes when certain sounds happen....it can actually block his vision so even at 30 years of age he's afraid to get his drivers license......I can identify with some of these things like smelling colors but not to a degree that interrupts daily life......it is a fascinating subject................would LOVE to hear more on this topic!
I was in math class this this one time when a boy sitting behind me did something with his ruler that made it bounce and vibrate in a crazy way. when that happened I got a full view of rainbows right in front of my eyes and that blinded me so I couldn't even see the notes on the board for a couple of seconds. I didn't know I had synesthesia back then but that freaked me out. I also felt the sound in my body in a really uncomfortable way. so yeah I get what your son is going through. it can be very hard. however when it's blinded me it's never been longer than two or three seconds. I hope your son can get his driver's license one day
@@ann_3-n6e He's also high functioning Autistic....he's now 32 and still refuses to get his license.....he struggles with a lot of different things especially social interactions but TY for your kind words! Good luck with your situation as well!!!
Wow, that's weird. My synesthesia doesn't block my vision at all. Even if the. Colors I get are based on people I'm looking at or if I'm using my spatial strategic understanding.
I have time space synaesthesia - it was really interesting to hear how other people experience their shapes. I also count in shapes too - I believe these are called number lines.
Brilliant - always enjoy being apprised and hence, re-situated, on my individual journey though amazing perceptions experienced by others. Once saw a clock whose second hand had the word “future” on its right side and “past” on its left side. Made sense to me, but to other cultures it can be totally incomprehensible. Realizing this is what makes the human experience so cleverly diverse and interesting.
I have this. It goes wayyy back the year i was born and to wayyy in the future as well ! I can visualize any decade, centuries, weeks, days, hours. I have this since i was a kid. That may be the reason i love history. I can even visualize the seasons/ episodes of a serie that i'm watching.
Come with me and you'll be In a world of pure imagination Take a look and you'll see Into your imagination We'll begin with a spin Traveling in the world of my creation What we'll see will defy explanation
I have this and it’s like I sense the months around me. To the right of me is always summer. But separately I also feel the months around my house, the direction of the backyard is towards summer always. So it’s interesting it’s a part of the walls around me and also following me
Wow, I had no idea I have sequence synaeathesia! I always thought it was normal. I see it in the calendar, time, years, weeks and the alphabet. I also associate the calendar and alphabet with colours. My mind is blown!
As a child I always struggled with the illustration of the year in a circle going clockwise because my physical calendar goes counter clockwise, till this day any illustration of the year anything but counter clockwise makes no sense to me, or if January is placed anywhere other than in the top left of the circle. If the illustration has colours it irritates me even more because most of the time the colours are "wrong".
when i was a little kid, waiting for midnight for Christmas to open presents felt like forever. i would be looking at the time and i could feel it stretching further and further from midnight, and it would drive me insane cause i really wanted to open my presents. Now i can stay up for 15 hours straight without a care in the world. Some months if i don't have anything planned, i don't even keep track of time, day or holiday. I just automatically do what i gotta do to survive and depend on the sun's light and the birds singing outside to keep me adjusted. Not keeping track of time is kinda of fun sometimes because i feel like i time skip a lot of major events making me feel like a time traveler.
So interesting! I was adopted at 2 1/2 yrs from Korea so Korean was my first language and even though I wasn’t raised by Koreans or in the culture I still visualized my dob to the right. Wow! I also have this kind of spatial time synesthesia which I discovered wasn’t normal by an old bf when I told him he didn’t understand what I was talking about.
Thank you so much for this upload TEDx! I absolutely love your channel! You have inspired me to go all in on my positivity and health RUclips channel and media business this year! Keep rocking the YT airwaves and blessings to you from this new RUclipsr!🙏🏼✨😊
I always thought of being in a moving car as being somewhere and nowhere at the same time, and it was oddly comforting to me. I stopped on your comment though, because in the early 90’s, I had a friend that used to call my car the little red Time Machine. I do also have this calendar synesthesia, too.
This is prolly the coolest condition ever. I use to have it as a kid but it was the most common one (graphemes). I remember looking at letters and numbers and think about how it would have a certain color and then I determine it’s gender lol but it faded eventually although from time to time when I think of days of the week I get a certain color in my head that pops up like Tuesday is green and Saturday is brown but sometimes it goes unnoticed. I don’t think I have it tho considering it’s not a big part in my life but I have always been in love with the music to color synesthesia!
I have this, a year is curved like a C but a little straighter and its under me. A week is like a D with the straight line a little smaller being the weekend. Years are completely different. Very hard to explain but its more linear and follows the same set up as numbers. The alphabet also has a line. So yeah sequence space synthesia
Time is something we can feel when we either lose it or win it. When it passes by we feel it in our feelings, in our body, and on our skin. Most particularly, time is in our memories.
@Over It And that is perfectly alright. I have been working in a field which involves interaction with all sorts of people and what I've learned from my interactions is that we are all human beings and everything about us is different from others. That's how we are i guess...
Time is everything as time is just a pin point for existence. History has its timelines just as the future will have its own timelines. Time is infinite just like space is infinite. The real catch is everything is relative. You could’ve been late for work but if you had been on time you may have gotten in a horrible accident. Time is one of the many wonders of the universe and it gives me a positive outlook on everything so I hope this does for you.
Is that what I was seeing when I was on LSD and everything looked like data and I could kinda read people because I could swear I heard what they were gonna say before...idk just showed me i'm in the now, live it for good, cause what's next is probably more exiting than this.
WeebKing yes, LSD can open your consciousness to many different perspectives. Some just take it for the fun visuals but it wakes you up. After that there’s no going back to the way you saw and thought of things. A blessing and a curse because not everyone is ready to wake up and some refuse to believe things are seen a different way.
Precognitive association is where you associate more tangible things to less tangible things to make them more tangible so you are more likely to have premonitions or vision of the things you are trying to see in advance such as lotto results
I see numbers and letters as colors. Just got new license plates - new letters and numbers - and they’re a terrible shade of greenish-yellow. Clash with my beautiful new car. In reality, though, they’re blue and grey. Tried staring at them, but can’t erase their green-yellowness.
I have this. So did Prince and his drummer. Prince sang about it in one of his songs. I believe it was when we are dancing close and slow. He makes mention of it in regards to the very physical love he is singing about. But I can see music in color. I can taste the words. I feel it differently then most as I come to find out.
Don't worry too much. Make the best out of your unique skills. I see pattern and symbols in everything so I choose to be an artist, so I could make it visible for all other human. 😉✌️
Mike Hundeshagen great! I actually don’t worry so much, because this is not a « deviation », this is a « uniqueness ». And there are some cool benefits of seeing letters and numbers, days of week in different colors and other this stuff 👌🏻
Can we say that the act of making gestures while talking is a kind of synesthesia too? Because we're kinda imagining things associated with what we talk, which are not necessarily the literal meaning of the words. ☺️
My friend's Mum actually pointed this out to me years ago.. I was talking about something in front of her and said something to the effect of, 'and next Tuesday..' and pointed over my left shoulder.. and she stopped me and asked if I knew what synesthesia was and we got talking and that's when my mate chimed in with, 'Sarah tastes colours too, it's really funny!' or something to that effect. Needless to say I was on google as soon as I got home.. My main ones are spatial, numbers having personalities, days of the week, months having colours and personalities, and tasting cetain colours.
For me, time is a straight line, that also has many other lines that connect to different timelines. For me, tommorow is a million year far from today, but it seems so close because the box to the next boxes line connection is short. Also I am Arabic
Synesthesia is very interesting to me, I have always wondered what the world was like for such people, I am colour blind, as a child it was identified, so I have always known I see the world differently from everyone else.
My year starts in the west and end in the east. My week starts in the south and ends in the north. My day starts in the east and ends in the west. I guess I never realized how freaky it was until I found out how rare it is...
I see the months of the year in a position like a clock, where January is at 11, Feb at 10, etc. December is at the 12 position. I stand within the Month and move around this "clock". I'm looking ahead at June, July and Aug around the bend of the clock. My weeks are within the months and look like a sidewalk straight out infront of me. I can see the weekend in their boxes at the end of the sidewalk. I can still see the following week ahead of the weekend. I dont really see years past that I'm aware of...maybe more as boxes but not really defined. I thought everyone did this until a few yrs ago.
Great talk. Interesting way to frame perceptions of time to help non synesthetes understand what it’s like to have time-space synesthesia. Still missed the mark for me somehow, I didn’t really get anything from this except for a well thought out and articulate presentation.
Can we see time? We do Its called sunrise (east) and sunset (west) as the earth rotates counterclockwise around it axes and then counterclockwise around the sun and then the sun also runs counterclockwise around Milky Way galaxy so I think individuals with time-space synesthesia are probably sensing these planetary orbits more than most.
my year is like a rounded rectangle, goes clockwise, and the beginning of the year is higher up and further away from me, so it does kind of go down like a roller coaster as summer comes around and goes behind me. since discovering there's a word for this, I've been trying to nail down exactly what I see in a timeline and time in general because I usually only consciously see parts of it at a time, rather than the whole. I think they have colors, or at the very least shades, as well. like summer is brightest and it gets dark around the other months with December being the darkest
I mean, i have a sense of passage of time, and I visualise the year through a circle of seasons that dont have tight margins a calendar does, but ones that "feel" through seasonal environmental stimuli like a different time, and so I can visualise this in my mind. It doesnt follow me as i go through the year, but it helps to refer to it when making plans and setting dates to remember. does that mean i got this thing, i dont think so as its not 'automatic' i have to think about it, or does it?
*_"does that mean i got this thing, i dont think so as its not 'automatic' i have to think about it, or does it?"_* Do some research into the _"Hard Problem of Free-Will"_ . Here you might find your answer.
interesting bc while i do have time synesthesia, it doesnt manifest this way and in fact its the opposite? i see shapes in pure time? they have a fixed position relative to my line of sight and r constantly moving within and outside of itself (idk how to describe that but imagine an animation of a hypercube but with no physical lines attributed to the shape bc it isnt in the other 3 dimensions of space time) in that manner im seeing shapes given time? whereas she's seeing time given shape! fascinating! i think theres something to be said about how in which the connected pathways of the brain are ~particularly~ connected, and how this affects which sense is redefining the other. i.e i would call mine timed-sight or "shape's time" synesthesia whereas I would call hers seen-time or "time's shape" synesthesia. i guess they can all do that :D edit: typo lol
I will forever be a meatball to my wife. She actually tastes words. Names seem to be mostly associated to different foods. Some names can be the same food but a different variation of the food like peanut butter for Fred and Ted is creamy peanut butter. It is only one direction in that meatball doesn't equal my name. It is only the name equal to the food. We never knew there was a name for this.
So is it just having a visual that maps out time? Like I have the year on like a linear bit of a gameboard with December a little left of center. It doesn’t have a relation to my body though.
9:05 - 9:27 --- I tried this but my sense of directions and even left/right is so messed up. I was thought to be a bit of an underachiever because even in middle school the teacher would say left or right arm and I'd pick the wrong arm and he'd say "no you're other left." Lol
When math is easy because the numbers have a place in space. So no need to add, minus, multiply or divide, just need to figure out where the numbers are and what the space between them is.
I understand what she's talking because I relate but not with colour it's more like numbers which infinitely grow and does not move in a loop. Hard to explain but no one else has explained white I see in regard to how I see numbers
I do see letters and numbers as colors, but I don't think that they are consistent. What color an individual letter or number changes pretty frequently. So... What would I call that?
My experience differs from the 'forever' notion that is made throughout all talks I've watched thus far. To me, standalone letters and numbers will have congruent colours, but the colours vary in relation to how they're paired with other symbols, or how they sound in this combination, or what the rhythmic structure of the string of words is like. An entire word will have a distinct colour, also. The word 'word' is a pale bright blue to me. And some things, like the number zero, won't have a dense colour, but rather a ... noisy... spacial.. bright depth, like a half-empty off-white neon light that could potentially omit the sound of a buzzing house fly. The future is somewhere off to the right, while most of the past encircles me clockwise in chunks, except the 'future' corridor. I would have put my birth-date at the bottom center of that sheet, with no idea why.
Synesthesia is not imagination tho. It's not done on purpose and completely automatic. Also it stays the same even after decades, which is difficult to achieve with just memory and imagination. And by the way, if this seems familiar to you, maybe you have synesthesia too?
for me i have an automatic reaction to certain numbers and associating them with a correpesdong letter. Like for example g is eight and f is 5 etc. I don't know if this is considered synesthesia bc I'm not associating with another sense technically (unless visual could explain this) but just more so symbols. Someone helpppp pls lol
oh my god i'm kind of freaking out because i've experienced this my whole life and i never knew it was something that anyone else experienced or that it had a name, any time i've told people i can see time they look at me like i have three heads. my mind is blown right now woah....
Lmao I thought of everyone thought like this? Weeks are hills and years are vertical loops. Months are squares.
@ProdXCheko hey! days of a week are like if a weekly planner was 3D w hills and valleys, months all lie linearly along a spiral of years that goes up and down and i always exist in the current loop, and all of time stretches in a line from behind me to my bottom left, around my front, and then to the right but it gets fuzzy about a foot to the right. the lines for years and all time are colored based on memories or associations that i have with those times. i know the written description doesn't make much sense, i wish i could attach a picture ive drawn!!
@@absolutelynot6086 i don't see it exactly like that, but i can visualize what u mean and i think people who don't see time can't even conceptualize this based on conversations ive had trying to explain it to people. ask ppl around u how they "see time", most will have no idea how to even answer that question, which is bonkers to me
@@judeliberatoscioli3400 can u also predict calendar dates like which day of week 1 Jan 1990 would be
@@judeliberatoscioli3400 can i add u in instagram or somewhere else, i would b v happy and thankful if i could get picture of what u explained, thnk a lot
I have this! my mind was blown when you showed the picture. I have a note on my phone from 2017 where I drew what time looks like for me to show my friend. I said "what does yours look like?" and she said "huh?" it's so cool to see that other people see it like this!
yeeeeeeeeeeeeeep
Honestly, it's not only fun and games. My time space synesthesia sometimes makes it hard for me to plan a lot of things in the future because it makes some things bigger than they are (think school, work ect) and breaks and relaxation time smaller.
Although it does help me remember things that has happened and plans I have :)
@Doug Nading exactly! Time gets kind of distorted. Glad to hear other people experience it too, though.
Hi, I am trying to prepare a paper on synthesia. Could you please help me with sharing your experience.
@@kelkkammalayalamIdk if mine could help but, I do think I have some kind of SSS cuz mostly when I think or I "understand" I could just feel it. Its like a sudden flash of movement in my inner eyes that makes me feel like uh this makes total sense and what not. Well, its a conceptual SSS I guess. But its not all sunshine and rainbow though. I constantly struggle to understand how to explain some concept ot others because how I percieve it and I need to gruringly rearrange my thought to suit others
I have the same issue oO. And i thought everyone is like me.... i think thats a misconception of Synestesia.... Not everyone has it and thats a problem for the ones with it....
Yes, and it can also get in the way of mental arithmetic because the timeline has so many different proportions, corners, curves, subdivisions and changing POVs...
I found out that synesthesia was a thing just a year ago. I thought everyone thought of the time like I've done all my life
Ditto. I found out I have SSS at age 64... I thought the whole world saw time like this. How do they do it without the visuals?
ALL my life i felt like no one else could do this it feels so good to know others are like this. When I see Time i see totally different configurations for Months, Days and Years .
For example: Years, they flow horizontally on a 3d permeable number line from left to right categorized by decades....i was born in 1999 and obviously have no relocation of anything prior to my birth but i can literally visualize ever year back until the 1800's and further if necessary.
another example is when i visualize the 80's decade. it consists of anything and any ideas related to the 80's.(pop culture, historic events, stories told by family and birthdays) are all attached to its corresponding year.
Also i can go thru the 3d time number line. Right now in 2022 im inside the year facing the right which becomes my front pov.
i can't see past the current year. it all just flows into your usual regular imagination and future gazing. The past feels documented the future seems like an intangible aspiration.
Very close to what I see. My family thinks I'm nuts. Finally someone else who gets it.
Okay let me get this straight doesn't
All people visualize the years from left to right? Also for some reoson i see the first six month on my left and the latter months on the right. Even if i am on those months the position is fixed.If i am in February i see myself on the right but if it's September than i see myself on the left. Is it normal?
@@alshahriar6230 yeah bro everybody's got their unique programming.
@@DemarcoPolo ow okay thanks .because that would have mean i had two synesthesia. I currently have Sound-Shape synesthesia.
My timeline goes back to well before my birth. It's like a massive ribbon stretching to the back after a vast room. It starts to my left and has intersections at the years, decades and centuries. If you name a year like 500 AD, I automatically see where it is in my mental timeline.
Sounds like mine!
Literally same!
My husband and I had an argument about this last night because I was curious what his calendar looks like and he didn't have one. I thought he was crazy! After some questioning on his part, we realized I may be unique one in my perceptions. The months of the year, days of the week, school grades, age, numbers, the alphabet, time, and family systems all have very distinct visual-spatial forms. My numbers look very close to the example shown in the video with 7-9 sloping upwards, 10 at the top, 11-15 sloping down, then turning up for 16-19 and peaking back up at 20. Of course, this isn't in 2D. Select numbers and letters have colors assigned as well.
OKay... another ding! You just made me realize my school grades & alphabet also have a pattern... Thank you!
Realizing that I have auditory visual synesthesia legitimately changed my life. I experience music and sound in mental images that are incredibly rich, vivid, and specific. This experience has always made it very difficult for me to express the way that im experiencing things. I never put the pieces together until I was talking to someone about a song and I said "this song sounds how this image looks" and they told me that sounds like synesthesia. I can never turn these sensory experiences off either. I still don't know how to put a lot of my internal experiences into words but even just having a name for the condition that I have has been a huge deal to me
I also see songs as pictures but i cant describe them. Not sure if this is synesthesia but still interesting
I lived with it for so many years not knowing what is it. Now I know. And I've learned that this is connected with my hypermnesia.
I'm now off to google hypermenesia or however you spelled it. I too have SSS.
@@SpeegBJ I thin it's a gift and a curse at the same time. I hang on to the past very much because it's very vivid, real and within my grasp. Future is unknown, the present is uncertain. Synesthesia and hypermnesia just make me ruminate on what is long gone. Music, smell, date and the emotions, thoughts, events etc is on my mind, really hard to eradicate.
My weeks are shaped like a capital letter "D" with the weekend on the straight part and M-F is on the round part but it is more swollen than a standard "D" in order to fit all of the days. My 24 hr day winds randomly up but in always the same shape, of course. My year is also in the shape of a "D" but it lies with the straight part North with the "belly" dropping Southward. It has the summer months on the straight part with a slight right-angled soft bend at Dec. 25th where it goes a bit sharper or straighter towards summer. My decades go along with the shape of my centuries which have no actual shape but form a bent and curvy line like an undone but rebent randomly coat hanger, but always bent the same way. I only differ from Ms. Malpas description in that my bends do not occur on 10 year intervals. They bend and curve at a variety of intervals and I doubt they have regular intervals. It would be something to sit down to figure out if they did because I am totally unaware of it if they do... But my jaw dropped when I heard what she was talking about because I had no idea that it, this time/space synaesthesia, was a "thing". I only found out recently though that not everyone sees it. I spent my whole life thinking most people "saw" time in some very solid way like this. Oh, I forgot the other difference. When time runs through me it goes through from west to east (my centuries do anyway) no matter which way I am standing. So it can pass through my back or my stomach or my sides. Mostly my sides though so I can point past to future. But always from West to East, (for the centuries anyway). Ha! It just occurred to me that it brings a whole new meaning to 3D for me! Thank you Ms. Malpas.
NSEW plays a big role in my maps also. My weeks are similar though more what I call eye shaped, with Sat and Sun (always on the West side going North to South) being the upper eyelid. Mon-Fri lower lid (East side going South to North) . My 24 hr clock is like an escalator. 1 am to 9 am going down, the rest going up (this is the only one without a NSEW) My year is slightly oval, with Dec/Jan at the top North. July/ Aug in the South. My past years are pretty boring. They loop over my left should in a ticker tape that runs in a crinkly line back like I'm trailing a long streamer . My daughter has this also. In the 1990's 20/20 did a bit on it and we both just about lost our minds. We had no idea it was a thing or had a name.
@@DAWNSIE1961 Does your daughter have similar patterning to her timelines as you?
@Gerardo Berumen So your winter months per se, are o the straight part of the "D"? Do your months or weeks or hours in a day have any shape too? Or your number strings? I'm so curious...
So fun to hear from others with this silly and wonderful... ummm... "gift" I think we should call it. In writing that I just realized that It is one of the few things in the "world inside my own head" that 1) Has never changed in any way. 2) Has never been a bad thing in any way 3) that I don't think that it helps my memory of things since I have a fairly awful memory even though it seems like something like this would help memory recall... I could be totally wrong though in that maybe it actually does help my memory because otherwise it would be worse than it is now if I did not have Synaesthesia... Anyway, I think we need to have a World-Wide Synaesthesia League... We could call it Synaesthesists League Of the World... Acronym S.L.O.W. lol!
@@kennaortega3708 Very similar but not exactly the same. My maps are far more detailed than her's I think, and she doesn't have the NSEW element at all. But her grapheme synesthesia is way stronger than mine.
My concept of time starts in the centre and travels upward in a spiral. My synesthesia is the ability to feel things spatially with my senses. Also, when I hug or get close to certain people, I either hear a pleasant sound or shrill sound.
OMG! You just made me realize that when I hug people that I experience what it looks like inside them! Mostly what it looks like inside their mouths... especially when french kissing! Lol! I always thought it was peculiar to see that but had no frame of reference for what I was experiencing! Thank You for the insight! Pardon the pun!
you hear a sounds?! thats amazing!!!! wow. My year timeline goes backwards in a straight line behind me, from now till 2000 its on a super bright white background with red and orange years, the it suddenly turns left at 1999-1900 and become gradually more grey and muted (maybe bc of the lack of coloured photography?), 1800s becomes a monochromatic muted red colour, after that the timeline is sort of blank, with markers at key years that I can zoom into when I think about them specifically. Up until I discovered synesthesia I thought everyone saw time
I thought everyone saw time like this for 64 years; the age I discovered this. Your patterns are somewhat similar to mine. As a cultural historian this makes dates, centuries, and events a piece of cake to conjure up in my projects.
my one son can smell colors and also sees geometric shapes when certain sounds happen....it can actually block his vision so even at 30 years of age he's afraid to get his drivers license......I can identify with some of these things like smelling colors but not to a degree that interrupts daily life......it is a fascinating subject................would LOVE to hear more on this topic!
I was in math class this this one time when a boy sitting behind me did something with his ruler that made it bounce and vibrate in a crazy way. when that happened I got a full view of rainbows right in front of my eyes and that blinded me so I couldn't even see the notes on the board for a couple of seconds. I didn't know I had synesthesia back then but that freaked me out. I also felt the sound in my body in a really uncomfortable way. so yeah I get what your son is going through. it can be very hard. however when it's blinded me it's never been longer than two or three seconds. I hope your son can get his driver's license one day
I see the colors and shapes with music too. And I have spatial sequential synesthesia as well. Never knew until yesterday that it's rare.
@@ann_3-n6e He's also high functioning Autistic....he's now 32 and still refuses to get his license.....he struggles with a lot of different things especially social interactions but TY for your kind words! Good luck with your situation as well!!!
Wow, that's weird. My synesthesia doesn't block my vision at all. Even if the. Colors I get are based on people I'm looking at or if I'm using my spatial strategic understanding.
@@solsystem1342 I think with this condition everyone is kinda different in many ways......that's what truly intrigues me about this! 😊
TEDx talks is really another platform where we get best information and met quality people
Volume is way too low, I can't hear anything.
You have to use synesthesia to hear it silly.
Try turning the volume up.
@@doofy28 lol
@@aylbdrmadison1051 and destroy my ears when anything else in my device makes an unexpected noise?
@@michtheglitch if you're not going to take advice?? idk what to say to that.
One of the most interesting TED Talks I've heard yet
I have time space synaesthesia - it was really interesting to hear how other people experience their shapes. I also count in shapes too - I believe these are called number lines.
Brilliant - always enjoy being apprised and hence, re-situated, on my individual journey though amazing perceptions experienced by others. Once saw a clock whose second hand had the word “future” on its right side and “past” on its left side. Made sense to me, but to other cultures it can be totally incomprehensible. Realizing this is what makes the human experience so cleverly diverse and interesting.
I have this. It goes wayyy back the year i was born and to wayyy in the future as well !
I can visualize any decade, centuries, weeks, days, hours. I have this since i was a kid.
That may be the reason i love history.
I can even visualize the seasons/ episodes of a serie that i'm watching.
Come with me and you'll be
In a world of pure imagination
Take a look and you'll see
Into your imagination
We'll begin with a spin
Traveling in the world of my creation
What we'll see will defy explanation
I have this and it’s like I sense the months around me. To the right of me is always summer. But separately I also feel the months around my house, the direction of the backyard is towards summer always. So it’s interesting it’s a part of the walls around me and also following me
Wow, I had no idea I have sequence synaeathesia! I always thought it was normal. I see it in the calendar, time, years, weeks and the alphabet. I also associate the calendar and alphabet with colours. My mind is blown!
As a child I always struggled with the illustration of the year in a circle going clockwise because my physical calendar goes counter clockwise, till this day any illustration of the year anything but counter clockwise makes no sense to me, or if January is placed anywhere other than in the top left of the circle. If the illustration has colours it irritates me even more because most of the time the colours are "wrong".
when i was a little kid, waiting for midnight for Christmas to open presents felt like forever. i would be looking at the time and i could feel it stretching further and further from midnight, and it would drive me insane cause i really wanted to open my presents. Now i can stay up for 15 hours straight without a care in the world. Some months if i don't have anything planned, i don't even keep track of time, day or holiday. I just automatically do what i gotta do to survive and depend on the sun's light and the birds singing outside to keep me adjusted. Not keeping track of time is kinda of fun sometimes because i feel like i time skip a lot of major events making me feel like a time traveler.
So interesting! I was adopted at 2 1/2 yrs from Korea so Korean was my first language and even though I wasn’t raised by Koreans or in the culture I still visualized my dob to the right. Wow! I also have this kind of spatial time synesthesia which I discovered wasn’t normal by an old bf when I told him he didn’t understand what I was talking about.
Thank you so much for this upload TEDx! I absolutely love your channel! You have inspired me to go all in on my positivity and health RUclips channel and media business this year! Keep rocking the YT airwaves and blessings to you from this new RUclipsr!🙏🏼✨😊
Go for it!
@@dyslexiaslittleandbigdeald9229 Aw thank you! 😊🙏🏼
@@MandyJRoss I'm here for you, starting out too. perhaps youd like to tell me more about your channel and we can promote each other.
@@dyslexiaslittleandbigdeald9229 Thank you so much! I would be hapy to support one another-- subbing now 😊
Yes. Your car is a time machine. On the road ahead, you see the future. In the mirror, you see the past and inside the car is the present.
But what if you drive it backwards?
I always thought of being in a moving car as being somewhere and nowhere at the same time, and it was oddly comforting to me.
I stopped on your comment though, because in the early 90’s, I had a friend that used to call my car the little red Time Machine. I do also have this calendar synesthesia, too.
This is prolly the coolest condition ever. I use to have it as a kid but it was the most common one (graphemes). I remember looking at letters and numbers and think about how it would have a certain color and then I determine it’s gender lol but it faded eventually although from time to time when I think of days of the week I get a certain color in my head that pops up like Tuesday is green and Saturday is brown but sometimes it goes unnoticed. I don’t think I have it tho considering it’s not a big part in my life but I have always been in love with the music to color synesthesia!
I have this, a year is curved like a C but a little straighter and its under me. A week is like a D with the straight line a little smaller being the weekend.
Years are completely different. Very hard to explain but its more linear and follows the same set up as numbers.
The alphabet also has a line.
So yeah sequence space synthesia
Yep! That's me
Thank you ❤
Thank you for the lecture, interesting science. All the best for further research!
I think I have this but with years and decades. They’re in blocks with the 90s, 00s, 10s, and now being the focus. The font is a sans serif and blue.
Time is something we can feel when we either lose it or win it. When it passes by we feel it in our feelings, in our body, and on our skin. Most particularly, time is in our memories.
@Over It And that is perfectly alright. I have been working in a field which involves interaction with all sorts of people and what I've learned from my interactions is that we are all human beings and everything about us is different from others. That's how we are i guess...
In our hopes and memories, our assumptions and projections.
Time is just nothing....it just continue to move and make memories or work on a vision...its precious so utilise it in ethical works..😊
So if time is nothing and time is precious, then wouldn’t nothing also be precious?
Time is everything as time is just a pin point for existence. History has its timelines just as the future will have its own timelines. Time is infinite just like space is infinite. The real catch is everything is relative. You could’ve been late for work but if you had been on time you may have gotten in a horrible accident. Time is one of the many wonders of the universe and it gives me a positive outlook on everything so I hope this does for you.
Is that what I was seeing when I was on LSD and everything looked like data and I could kinda read people because I could swear I heard what they were gonna say before...idk just showed me i'm in the now, live it for good, cause what's next is probably more exiting than this.
WeebKing yes, LSD can open your consciousness to many different perspectives. Some just take it for the fun visuals but it wakes you up. After that there’s no going back to the way you saw and thought of things. A blessing and a curse because not everyone is ready to wake up and some refuse to believe things are seen a different way.
Precognitive association is where you associate more tangible things to less tangible things to make them more tangible so you are more likely to have premonitions or vision of the things you are trying to see in advance such as lotto results
Brilliant, thank you! 👍
I see numbers and letters as colors. Just got new license plates - new letters and numbers - and they’re a terrible shade of greenish-yellow. Clash with my beautiful new car. In reality, though, they’re blue and grey. Tried staring at them, but can’t erase their green-yellowness.
Wow! Great description of the color number synesthesia. I only have spatial sequencing.
Very interesting concepts
I have this. So did Prince and his drummer. Prince sang about it in one of his songs. I believe it was when we are dancing close and slow. He makes mention of it in regards to the very physical love he is singing about. But I can see music in color. I can taste the words. I feel it differently then most as I come to find out.
AMAZING! Thank you for this!! Much gratitude!
I have synesthesia and it’s so unusual to feel what other people can’t and will never be able to feel, but very cool at the same time.
Don't worry too much. Make the best out of your unique skills. I see pattern and symbols in everything so I choose to be an artist, so I could make it visible for all other human. 😉✌️
Mike Hundeshagen great! I actually don’t worry so much, because this is not a « deviation », this is a « uniqueness ». And there are some cool benefits of seeing letters and numbers, days of week in different colors and other this stuff 👌🏻
Congrats Imogen! Love your talk. Love from your old old science editor friend!
Can we say that the act of making gestures while talking is a kind of synesthesia too? Because we're kinda imagining things associated with what we talk, which are not necessarily the literal meaning of the words. ☺️
Great thought, super interesting!
0:36 you must've, "f" has always had soft, comforting blueish shade of lilac
My friend's Mum actually pointed this out to me years ago.. I was talking about something in front of her and said something to the effect of, 'and next Tuesday..' and pointed over my left shoulder.. and she stopped me and asked if I knew what synesthesia was and we got talking and that's when my mate chimed in with, 'Sarah tastes colours too, it's really funny!' or something to that effect. Needless to say I was on google as soon as I got home.. My main ones are spatial, numbers having personalities, days of the week, months having colours and personalities, and tasting cetain colours.
Beautiful Imogen
13:43 - 13:55 ---+ or even if you grow up in a different religious/spiritual system than the mainstream.
For me, time is a straight line, that also has many other lines that connect to different timelines. For me, tommorow is a million year far from today, but it seems so close because the box to the next boxes line connection is short. Also I am Arabic
Synesthesia is very interesting to me, I have always wondered what the world was like for such people, I am colour blind, as a child it was identified, so I have always known I see the world differently from everyone else.
Absolutely amazing presentation @Imogen Malpas !!
My year starts in the west and end in the east. My week starts in the south and ends in the north. My day starts in the east and ends in the west. I guess I never realized how freaky it was until I found out how rare it is...
I see time as a two - year ellipse with a left hand and a right hand. I had no idea this was synasthesia!
Fascinating. Thank You Imogen.
Time is more important than money.
I see the months of the year in a position like a clock, where January is at 11, Feb at 10, etc. December is at the 12 position. I stand within the Month and move around this "clock". I'm looking ahead at June, July and Aug around the bend of the clock.
My weeks are within the months and look like a sidewalk straight out infront of me. I can see the weekend in their boxes at the end of the sidewalk. I can still see the following week ahead of the weekend.
I dont really see years past that I'm aware of...maybe more as boxes but not really defined.
I thought everyone did this until a few yrs ago.
Great talk. Interesting way to frame perceptions of time to help non synesthetes understand what it’s like to have time-space synesthesia. Still missed the mark for me somehow, I didn’t really get anything from this except for a well thought out and articulate presentation.
Amazing explanation I must say.much love😘
Love it!
2:24 - 2:28 ---+ I've always done this since a kid and just always thought I was weird.
For a brief moment I thought I saw Hermione Granger on a Ted talk
F is light brown... And the year is a ferris wheel. Can't describe how I see days...
Can you believe that it’s almost June? Time flies with this quarantine! 👀
Can we see time? We do Its called sunrise (east) and sunset (west) as the earth rotates counterclockwise around it axes and then counterclockwise around the sun and then the sun also runs counterclockwise around Milky Way galaxy so I think individuals with time-space synesthesia are probably sensing these planetary orbits more than most.
does anyone else see time as an endless sea? or a shape not described in this video? I'm curious to know what it's like for others
my year is like a rounded rectangle, goes clockwise, and the beginning of the year is higher up and further away from me, so it does kind of go down like a roller coaster as summer comes around and goes behind me. since discovering there's a word for this, I've been trying to nail down exactly what I see in a timeline and time in general because I usually only consciously see parts of it at a time, rather than the whole. I think they have colors, or at the very least shades, as well. like summer is brightest and it gets dark around the other months with December being the darkest
I see a scroll in the left side of me.
I mean, i have a sense of passage of time, and I visualise the year through a circle of seasons that dont have tight margins a calendar does, but ones that "feel" through seasonal environmental stimuli like a different time, and so I can visualise this in my mind. It doesnt follow me as i go through the year, but it helps to refer to it when making plans and setting dates to remember. does that mean i got this thing, i dont think so as its not 'automatic' i have to think about it, or does it?
*_"does that mean i got this thing, i dont think so as its not 'automatic' i have to think about it, or does it?"_*
Do some research into the _"Hard Problem of Free-Will"_ . Here you might find your answer.
I see time EXACTLY like that - I also believed all the months & letters had a Colour & that everyone saw those colors- til I watched this. Cool!!
@@Nordkiinach Fascinating stuff, that!! Xo
No, because some people just visualize very well Your way of thinking be very talented in specific types of ways.
Is it possible animals too could have synesthesia or forms of it and how would we be able to tell?
interesting bc while i do have time synesthesia, it doesnt manifest this way and in fact its the opposite? i see shapes in pure time? they have a fixed position relative to my line of sight and r constantly moving within and outside of itself (idk how to describe that but imagine an animation of a hypercube but with no physical lines attributed to the shape bc it isnt in the other 3 dimensions of space time) in that manner im seeing shapes given time? whereas she's seeing time given shape! fascinating! i think theres something to be said about how in which the connected pathways of the brain are ~particularly~ connected, and how this affects which sense is redefining the other. i.e i would call mine timed-sight or "shape's time" synesthesia whereas I would call hers seen-time or "time's shape" synesthesia. i guess they can all do that :D
edit: typo lol
I will forever be a meatball to my wife. She actually tastes words. Names seem to be mostly associated to different foods. Some names can be the same food but a different variation of the food like peanut butter for Fred and Ted is creamy peanut butter. It is only one direction in that meatball doesn't equal my name. It is only the name equal to the food. We never knew there was a name for this.
fantastic
So is it just having a visual that maps out time? Like I have the year on like a linear bit of a gameboard with December a little left of center. It doesn’t have a relation to my body though.
9:05 - 9:27 --- I tried this but my sense of directions and even left/right is so messed up. I was thought to be a bit of an underachiever because even in middle school the teacher would say left or right arm and I'd pick the wrong arm and he'd say "no you're other left." Lol
Sublime! . . .
Wonderful
good idea
Very interesting concept
How do i know my alphabet. How to recognize it
Months of the year sit round my body like a hoop.
It would be interesting, Astronomy has a place in this. Visualizing time with the stars and sky
@@Dofissan Wow! and maybe we all see it differently due to different locations in the universe at our time of ...say... birth!... Hmmmm
When math is easy because the numbers have a place in space. So no need to add, minus, multiply or divide, just need to figure out where the numbers are and what the space between them is.
I think that time is more like a flux of information being affected as it interacts with the conscious in a non linear system.
ooh... ouch... Wow! This concept stretched me a whole new way to see things... Holy cow! Thank you! That is DEEEP!
I understand what she's talking because I relate but not with colour it's more like numbers which infinitely grow and does not move in a loop. Hard to explain but no one else has explained white I see in regard to how I see numbers
I do see letters and numbers as colors, but I don't think that they are consistent. What color an individual letter or number changes pretty frequently. So... What would I call that?
I have this but it’s not external, it’s just in my minds eye.
My experience differs from the 'forever' notion that is made throughout all talks I've watched thus far. To me, standalone letters and numbers will have congruent colours, but the colours vary in relation to how they're paired with other symbols, or how they sound in this combination, or what the rhythmic structure of the string of words is like. An entire word will have a distinct colour, also. The word 'word' is a pale bright blue to me. And some things, like the number zero, won't have a dense colour, but rather a ... noisy... spacial.. bright depth, like a half-empty off-white neon light that could potentially omit the sound of a buzzing house fly.
The future is somewhere off to the right, while most of the past encircles me clockwise in chunks, except the 'future' corridor.
I would have put my birth-date at the bottom center of that sheet, with no idea why.
Sometimes I use music and TV shows to measure time. Or the concepts from them.
F = light green 💚
I give months/times colors, but for some reason June and July don't have them they just leave me blank.
Positive
if time is one's own perception.. is time truly relative. math is indisputable...but not infallible
Time will only tell, but Time can’t even speak.
Audio is way too low. Even cranked all the way up I can barely hear it
I used headphones. It helped - hope you have some mate xo
Maybe you have synesthesia and you just need to turn the brightness up.
@@bobman929 YESSS!!!😁
Bob Man Maybe so. I had a whiskey and it got a lot better.
This is just imagining something and giving it characteristics in your mind. Everyone does this
Synesthesia is not imagination tho. It's not done on purpose and completely automatic. Also it stays the same even after decades, which is difficult to achieve with just memory and imagination.
And by the way, if this seems familiar to you, maybe you have synesthesia too?
Volume!
Amazing narrating voice. Were I to be given a voice to narrate my thoughts, I would like the voice to be Imogen's.
Hmm... Sounds pretty interesting 🤔 seems like I got a new topic to look for.😁
Her: F is yellow
Me: No it's light green
Anybody else:
For me F is violet-ish
Blue
F is invisible!
F is blue :)
dark purple
My time is on a grid and I can feel it ;)
Remember what Sadhguru said Kali=color
Where is Brian Rose speech from LONDON Real?
Adam Neely has entered the chat
for me i have an automatic reaction to certain numbers and associating them with a correpesdong letter. Like for example g is eight and f is 5 etc. I don't know if this is considered synesthesia bc I'm not associating with another sense technically (unless visual could explain this) but just more so symbols. Someone helpppp pls lol
I can't hear anything the sound is to low