The Backwards Brain Bicycle - Smarter Every Day

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Permalink Reply by Gene Tenner on April 26, 2015 at 7:36am

I found this very interesting, because something similar happened to me yesterday. I was taking photos of carpenter volunteers who were working on low-income homes in the Austin neighborhood. There were lots of ins and outs of homes and one-way streets, and all of a sudden I lost my sense of direction; north became south and east became west. Even with a compass in front of me, it was a problem getting around. This lasted until I hit Madison and Austin which borders Oak Park and is where I grew up. Suddenly, I refound my bearings and all was normal again. I continued on to Maywood for more photos and did not lose my north-south-east-west senses.

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Permalink Reply by Haddon on April 26, 2015 at 8:50pm

I've had this happen to me twice in my life and both times in specific lighting, it's later afternoon and it's overcast and the sky is a uniform yellow/ocher. The last time was 3 years ago, I was way in the NW of the city and I needed to go SE to get home. I intellectually knew which way I had to go but any time there was a bend in the road things would get thrown off and I would find myself going in the wrong direction, diagonals were killing me.

Eventually I went into a McD's and worked out a simple route to get home but even though I knew intellectually I was going in the right direction some other part of my brain was screaming that I was going the wrong direction. This lasted for a bit even after I hit very familiar territory. The time before that was a decade ago and the lighting was the same and both were in the fall, I can recall both quite well because they scared the shit out of me, that has to be what it's like when your brain starts to go, hopefully it never happens again.

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Permalink Reply by Gene Tenner on April 27, 2015 at 11:56am

That is interesting, Haddon, because I remember that I kept looking at the sky for where the sun was, but it was uniformly grey. Apparently, this is a primordial response for us former hunter-gatherers to determine direction.

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Permalink Reply by Haddon on April 28, 2015 at 5:21am

Yea, it was the lack of light that threw you off. You were in an area you didn't know and had no directional clues to go with / no way to orient yourself. How would you know which way was which? Happens, ya made it back safe.