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 went off.
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 time is left, but somehow I do know when "it's time."
Haven't tested this on longer timescales (hours) though, but I did meet a guy who said he always knew what time it was because he used to work for a TV station doing the countdown til they go on air.
A similar phenomenon occurs on public transit-- waking up at (or just before) your stop. I found that if I've taken the trip at least once, I can wake up pretty much exactly when I need to. Nearly every other frequent commuter I've discussed this with has a similar experience.
I used to believe it was related to subtle audio/visual cues while unconscious, but it might just be a function of a sense of time.
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.
I noticed years ago when at a bus stop, I'd get impatient and antsy seconds before the bus arrived (on time). I figured it was my subconscious alarm clock.
When I was a kid, we used to have a radio/tape/CD player with a digital clock on it. Whenever I looked at it, as in whenever my body thought it would be a good idea to check the time, it was always something like 11:11 or 16:16.
I do it to when I need to wake up early so my body is not "surprised" by the low amount of sleep. Works well I think.
Do you calculate how many hours you will sleep ? Maybe the brain set some kind of a timer.
Was it "The Power of Your Subconscious Mind" that you read, by any chance? I remember reading that there and applying it as well and it did kind of work. I've read that as kid as well, so maybe that has to do with something. I regard that books as a pseudoscience from today's time, but who knows.
Curious if you play/ed a musical instrument? I learned violin as a child and also experience the same phenomenon you describe, but I always attributed it to some neural pathway that was created during musical training (i.e. reading sheet music).
My asleep brain can do the exact same thing, even with consistent sleep deprivation (although it gets increasingly difficult beyond a sleep deficit of twelve hours per week).
On the flip side, my awake brain is completely and totally time-blind. I can go _hours_ on a subject I am obsessing over, and think it’s been just thirty minutes. Asperger’s sucks.
A couple of weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night. My first thought was, it's 2:54am. I didn't have any visible clocks, so I looked at my phone, and it was 2:53am. I've had that happen multiple times. Very strange.
Is it possible you are subconsciously waking up and looking at the clock (or doing it consciously at the time but just not remembering it)? Sleep generally triggers some unique memory suppression mechanisms.
Likewise. It works for insane times too; I've woken up in as little as 3 hours when I desperately needed 8 hours. There's a bit of a computational alarm clock in our brains somehow.
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.
Yup, have experienced it personally. I usually wake up few mins before the alarm goes off. Though not proven through science you know something is there.
Another thing I would like to add is that scientific community should be more open to test conventional wisdom.
The bike example is interesting because I remember learning how to ride a bike. I remember lots of details which others can confirm. But my perspective is external to my past self and I’m free to meander about in the memory, pause it, etc. It’s not particularly movie-like. I have a difficult time dipping into a first person perspective. And despite the article’s suggestion, even though I remember a spill in some detail (although in that case it’s more like a first-person snapshot than a movie) and although I know there was pain, I don’t remember the pain, just the fact of it. I do remember the feeling of anger and frustration as a result of the fall.
Anyway, anyone who found the article interesting might be interested in Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Anything by Joshua Foer. In the book, Foer talks about his experiences with memory championships and fills that in with information about then-current understanding of human memory.
The place I learned to ride a bike is a place I know very well and I’ve used it as a memory palace. I wonder if doing that has somehow modified the perspective on that particular memory. I certainly have other memories which are episodic. Or maybe it’s just so far back in my past and I’ve reconstructed it enough times that it’s not quite as personal or visceral.
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.
I kind of know what you mean. In my case, it was due a psychedelic substance. I vividly remember being inside, walking out in the street and opening the door to go out, in that order. Made me feel very confused because I knew that logically it could not have gone that way, yet that was the chronology in my mind.
I can't really relate to the article's description of episodic memory. I'm also aphantastic. I wonder if there is a correlation or if it's just coincidence.
These things are surprisingly little studied, for example aphantasia has only really seen scientific interest in the last ten years. We all seem to assume that everyone's experience is the same as ours, only slowly discovering how untrue that really is. Even something "obvious" like colour blindness in only known for about 250 years.
Even just the idea that there are specific cells for this is fascinating, and the fact that they change their 'tick' speed based on mood/interest? I should read the paper!:
In Sasha Shulgin’s book PIKAL, he describes mixing two drugs, I think it was MMA and cannabis, and experiencing perceived time dilation. He describes it as looking at the hands of a clock and experiencing much more time between the movement of the hands than one normally would. He said it was frightening, so he called his friend to come help. He was able to speak normally and hear people speak normally. While he was on the phone, he asked for a timer to be set while he went to go retrieve something. His experience of walking down the hall and back felt to him like twenty minutes. When he returned to the phone, he was told it had only been two minutes.
The effect wore off by the next day. He was never able to recreate the effect, but he kept a battery of experiments at the ready of it ever happened again. He expressed regret at not being able to carry them out.
He once said that the experience changed his perception of death. If time were to continue dilating, asymptotically approaching a halting of time, then one might never die in their own experience.
Ok, armchair theory here, let's for a moment assume Einstein's belief that time is the fourth dimension.
We use our senses to detect/experience dimensions, right? I mean, we use sight, hearing, touch to detect 3-D space, for example (not forgetting taste and smell too).
If time is the fourth dimension, maybe these cells are our evolutionary attempt to sense/detect and operate within that dimension.
Which explains how the experience of time travel could be possible in at least one way - if we can change/affect our sense/perception of time (um.. navigating time?), it can seem to us like time travel. I'm not saying we would be affecting the timeline itself in this case, I mean more like messing with the sense of time that causes us to "experience" time travel.
Ok sorry, that does too sound like too much armchair pseudoscience, but this article and some of the other comments just got me thinking.
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.
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 really annoyed when the alarm clock goes off before the exciting part is over.
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?
This sounds exactly how my sense of chronology works. I have to find time markers and work my way from those to arrive at when a related memory occurred. I'll frequently reference photos that I happen to know has some obscure clue in it like a shirt a family member was wearing because I knew they had that shirt when I went to X event, which I still have a ticket stub memento for, therefor it was Y date.
I always attributed this to being home schooled (really just kind of free-range unschooled) until I was 14. I feel like I'm missing a lot of date-significant markers like passing from one grade to the next that most people have.
This title seems very misleading given the study described. They have found a correlation between some neurons firing in sequence and a list of words being spoken from memory. We don't have any concrete understanding of how memories are really encoded, stored, and recalled. Indeed, we don't even know if "encoded", "stored", and "recalled" are useful approximations for what's really going on in there. So suggesting that we have found some specific time keeping module seems awfully hand-wavy (at best) to me.
I thought we had discovered pacemaker cells over 20 years ago. I'd be very surprised if that didn't already factor into hypotheses of how episodic memory is ordered. Either this article is disingenuous, or neuroscience suffers from deep fragmentation that is hindering progress.
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?
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.
Yes, I mean I can certainly vaguely visualize past moments in some 50/50 abstract/visual form I guess, but movie like... I'm unsure what they mean to be honest... and I'm sure that would be hard to explain as well. I guess I can see these "movies" mentally in the same way as how I vaguely remember the sequence of events in a recent dream. Unsure if I'd call that a movie though. Sounds like a pretty crappy one at that!
It records ~40 days of temperature in a certain range, and remembers it till it senses the light of spring. If it's put into a dark room after 40 days, it waits till it senses light to flower, so it must be remembering those memories of cold temperatures.
[+] [-] yesenadam|5 years ago|reply
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 went off.
I have no idea how it works.
[+] [-] andai|5 years ago|reply
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 time is left, but somehow I do know when "it's time."
Haven't tested this on longer timescales (hours) though, but I did meet a guy who said he always knew what time it was because he used to work for a TV station doing the countdown til they go on air.
[+] [-] mbStavola|5 years ago|reply
A similar phenomenon occurs on public transit-- waking up at (or just before) your stop. I found that if I've taken the trip at least once, I can wake up pretty much exactly when I need to. Nearly every other frequent commuter I've discussed this with has a similar experience.
I used to believe it was related to subtle audio/visual cues while unconscious, but it might just be a function of a sense of time.
[+] [-] davidn20|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basicplus2|5 years ago|reply
Try tapping your forehead with forefinger while counting up to the time you want to wake up just before you close your eyes to go to sleep..
eg to wake at 6am...
tap six times while saying "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6"
Repeat 2 times, (3 times in total)
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skocznymroczny|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artonge|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kklisura|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] L_226|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rekabis|5 years ago|reply
On the flip side, my awake brain is completely and totally time-blind. I can go _hours_ on a subject I am obsessing over, and think it’s been just thirty minutes. Asperger’s sucks.
[+] [-] shannifin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tenaciousDaniel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aeternum|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BlahGod420|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aperocky|5 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] secfirstmd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rtx|5 years ago|reply
Another thing I would like to add is that scientific community should be more open to test conventional wisdom.
[+] [-] cgriswald|5 years ago|reply
Anyway, anyone who found the article interesting might be interested in Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Anything by Joshua Foer. In the book, Foer talks about his experiences with memory championships and fills that in with information about then-current understanding of human memory.
The place I learned to ride a bike is a place I know very well and I’ve used it as a memory palace. I wonder if doing that has somehow modified the perspective on that particular memory. I certainly have other memories which are episodic. Or maybe it’s just so far back in my past and I’ve reconstructed it enough times that it’s not quite as personal or visceral.
[+] [-] hellectronic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haolez|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SpeckOfDust|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nihilius|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wongarsu|5 years ago|reply
These things are surprisingly little studied, for example aphantasia has only really seen scientific interest in the last ten years. We all seem to assume that everyone's experience is the same as ours, only slowly discovering how untrue that really is. Even something "obvious" like colour blindness in only known for about 250 years.
[+] [-] danwills|5 years ago|reply
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/10/26/2013250117
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] PIKAL|5 years ago|reply
The effect wore off by the next day. He was never able to recreate the effect, but he kept a battery of experiments at the ready of it ever happened again. He expressed regret at not being able to carry them out.
He once said that the experience changed his perception of death. If time were to continue dilating, asymptotically approaching a halting of time, then one might never die in their own experience.
[+] [-] sixdimensional|5 years ago|reply
We use our senses to detect/experience dimensions, right? I mean, we use sight, hearing, touch to detect 3-D space, for example (not forgetting taste and smell too).
If time is the fourth dimension, maybe these cells are our evolutionary attempt to sense/detect and operate within that dimension.
Which explains how the experience of time travel could be possible in at least one way - if we can change/affect our sense/perception of time (um.. navigating time?), it can seem to us like time travel. I'm not saying we would be affecting the timeline itself in this case, I mean more like messing with the sense of time that causes us to "experience" time travel.
Ok sorry, that does too sound like too much armchair pseudoscience, but this article and some of the other comments just got me thinking.
[+] [-] notRobot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackinthebochs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apples_oranges|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IAmNotAFix|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magicalhippo|5 years ago|reply
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 really annoyed when the alarm clock goes off before the exciting part is over.
[+] [-] polytely|5 years ago|reply
I always thought this mainly had to do with ADD related working memory problems, but maybe it's more of an episodic memory problem?
[+] [-] eloisius|5 years ago|reply
I always attributed this to being home schooled (really just kind of free-range unschooled) until I was 14. I feel like I'm missing a lot of date-significant markers like passing from one grade to the next that most people have.
[+] [-] davidmurdoch|5 years ago|reply
Not being able to recall the year something occurred if you don't reflect on that memory every so often seems "normal" as well.
[+] [-] ekanes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] floathub|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acrefoot|5 years ago|reply
https://www.hhmi.org/news/researchers-discover-molecular-pac...
[+] [-] lexicality|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Loughla|5 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] senectus1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orbifold|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tarq0n|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29807853/
[+] [-] jug|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jchw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] byteface|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meroes|5 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/CA-YsWXRSHU?t=448
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabidopsis_thaliana#Light_sen...
It records ~40 days of temperature in a certain range, and remembers it till it senses the light of spring. If it's put into a dark room after 40 days, it waits till it senses light to flower, so it must be remembering those memories of cold temperatures.
[+] [-] 2Gkashmiri|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sebastian_j|5 years ago|reply