From Neurophilosophy: The cognitive benefits of time-space synaesthesia

"Two new studies now provide some insight into time-space synaesthesia, the least researched of all the forms of this fascinating condition. One is a case study of an individual whose time-space synaesthesia has an apparently unique characteristic. The second demonstrates that time-space synaesthetes are superior to non-synaesthetes in some cognitive abilities, and suggests that time-space synaesthesia may underly the savant-like abilities of people with hyperthymestic (or "super-memory") syndrome.

Time-space synaesthesia is a form of visuo-spatial synaesthesia in which individuals experience units of time - such as hours, days, or months - as occupying specific locations in space relative to their own body...

... L's performance on this task was compared with that of ten non-synaesthetic controls. The visual month cues were presented on a computer monitor for 600 milliseconds each, followed by a target square. The participants were asked to press a button as soon as they detected the presence of the target. As predicted, following visual cues of the first three months, L detected targets presented to the left significantly quicker than those presented to the right. Similarly, cues presented to the right were detected more quickly following visual presentations of the later months. For cues presented aurally, the opposite cueing pattern was observed. However, none of these effects was observed in the non-synaesthetic participants."

Last edited by nest0r (2009 November 27, 12:32 pm)