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Comment by grownseed | Hacker News Reader

> For starters, isolation messes with our sense of time.

Interestingly, people who have lost their sight or hearing, at birth or from a young age, experience this too.

From my own experience (back when I was deaf), I would (and occasionally still do) perceive relatively large stretches of time (up to a few hours) as considerably less, and vice-versa.

Funnily enough, though understandably I suppose, I also have a very hard time placing events in time in relation to each other, it very often becomes an exercise in rationality (i.e. event A could only have happened if event B had too).

Sadly, I can't find much information about this, except maybe this (which I don't have full access to) http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn_a_00135...

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If you want papers, it's always a good idea to check Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Hearing%20Shapes%20Our%2... which points to http://www.tmslab.org/publications/422.pdf / http://www.researchgate.net/publication/51629726_Hearing_sha... (and if GS doesn't work, there's always http://libgen.org/scimag/index.php )

Do we have a "sense of time"? I ask because upon reflection, it seems that I have to get back to my sentinels and time tracking devices constantly to know where I am in time. What day is it? What's the current time? I comprehend time ordering, cause and effect, but I can't measure nor track time worth a damn. If I go on holiday and avoid reference a watch and calendar, I can easily lose track in short order.

I'm not blind, nor deaf. I have a family and have never been isolated. I just assumed this is How Things Are, that attention must be paid in an effort to stay "in sync."

I found with the right schedule I would generally wake up 10 minutes before my alarm when off even when it was still dark outside. I can often guess what time it is +/-10 minutes throughout the day. I even stopped using a watch at collage as my internal clock was enough to get to class on time.

Granted, I was keeping a vary regular schedule and there where plenty of clocks around which helped, but I think most people can probably get to that level of precision.

In general humans have a sense of time. This is why the graveyard shift is so incomprehensibly difficult for human beings. At the core humans require routine but beyond that thoughtful activities lend themselves to daylight.

Depression is also strongly related to being in the dark, probably linked to us needing vitamin D.

I've experience the exact same process you do while trying to recall events and event order.

I attributed the difficult to a diagnosis of mild dyslexia and ADHD (if you believe in that sort of thing). Since these diagnoses in my early 20's I've learned these tricks (such as rationalizing event order).

Now, in my early 30's, this has just become habit. I'm still not as good at remembering events as others but with the mental tricks, I'm adequate.

I have a son who is aspie and time blind. This article and your comment sort of suggest an intriguing potential connection between the two things.

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