Article Sounds in your head: Some people have no inner voices (anauralia)

[C C]

Should they not even experience an internal narrative that voices their own thoughts, then anyone with both this and aphantasia would more or less have a blank mind.
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Mind’s ear: Investigating the sounds in your head
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2024/...-head.html

PRESS RELEASE: Some people can’t imagine a dog barking or a police siren. Songs can’t get stuck in their heads. They have no inner voices.

‘Anauralia’ was proposed in 2021 by scientists from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland to describe the little-known condition of a silent mind.

Now, as their investigations into the phenomenon continue, the University will host a global conference on sounds imagined in the mind, an event intended not just for scientists but also philosophers, musicians, poets and writers. ‘Mind’s Ear and Inner Voice’ will run from 14-16 April in Auckland.

“Scientists are fascinated by how the brain makes – or doesn’t make – imaginary sounds such as the inner voice,” says Professor Tony Lambert, of the School of Psychology. “But for writers, musicians and poets, it can be a key part of the creative process, so they have insights to share, too.”

Charles Dickens said he heard his characters’ voices; Alice Walker, too. Some readers conjure up characters’ voices in their minds.

For University of Auckland student Sang Hyun Kim, who has a silent mind, the idea that other people are hearing imaginary voices can seem “freaky”, and he’ll be fascinated to see what research turns up about auditory imagery.

The conference hopes to include personal accounts from individuals who experience anauralia and hyperauralia, the experience of extremely vivid auditory imagery.

Some people say they can recreate a symphony in great detail in their minds. Others report weaker auditory imagery, and a small number report none. In New Zealand, it’s estimated close to 1 percent of people experience anauralia, which is often accompanied by aphantasia, a lack of visual imagination. It seems there’s no downside to a silent mind; on the contrary, recent work suggests there may be an upside, involving improved attention.

The notion of a musician experiencing anauralia seems perplexing – how could you perform that role without being able to summon up sounds in your head?

“I don’t understand this either,” says Lambert. He surmises that the minds of such musicians may contain representations of music without the sensory qualities, akin to the difference between hearing music and music represented as a score.

“Overall, auditory imagery has attracted far less research attention than visual imagery,” says Lambert. “Our conference is unique in focusing on these issues from a strongly inter-disciplinary perspective.”

Lambert’s heightened interest in the area came after meeting Adam Zeman, the scientist who coined the term aphantasia, and after graduate students in the University’s PSYCH 721 Consciousness & Cognition paper noticed that scientific literature focused on visual imagery and largely ignored auditory imagery.

“This got me thinking about the absence of auditory imagery. Are there people who don’t imagine voices, music or other sounds? If so, how common is this? What are the psychological implications of experiencing a silent inner world?

“We now have good answers to the first two questions,” he says. “The last question is a much larger one, but I believe we have made strong progress.”

The research underway in the University’s Anauralia Lab, supported by a grant from the Marsden Fund, includes a neuroimaging study combining high-density EEG, functional magnetic resonance imaging and electromyography of activity in muscles used for speech.

The line-up of keynote speakers at the conference from around the world includes experts on hearing voices – auditory verbal hallucinations – and in a field called cognitive literary studies.

[Magical Realist]

Despite the fact that I live alone, I find myself constantly inundated with an ocean of vocalizations, some objectively "there" and some not so objectively "there". There is a girl who every few nights wanders the parking lot below my apt babbling and screaming in some sort of incomprehensible tongue. She usually goes back inside after about 5 minutes of this. My TV in the meantime is a constant droning monologue of undirected artificial speech--rehearsed scripts and audio recordings totally void of a real speaker's intent. When I lay in bed at night my inner voices swarm my fitfully sparking auditory circuits, manipulating them to produce a conversation I am having with charming people who don't really exist, at least not physically. When I finally fall asleep I find myself in a surreal wonderland where I am having casual conversations with living and dead relatives and even complete strangers.

But let's face it. I have trouble distinguishing the voice "inside my head" from the voice "outside my head", particularly when it is I myself who is speaking. Where does one end and the other start? How much is hallucinated and how much is physically heard? Is the voice I hear in my head while I'm reading the same voice as the one that moves my mouth and vibrates my throat to speak? Where afterall does the spoken word come from--this infinitely creative wellspring of truths needing to be told and secrets needing to be kept? "In the beginning was the Word."

[confused2]

A while back I asked a non-native English speaker whether, after many years in the UK, they now 'think' in English. He said that he did. I'm left wondering whether the thinking isn't just language but also cultural. Like do religious folk 'think' in their religion? In any plan (mine anyway) there's an element of 'try not to look or act too weirdly' .. 'try not to set fire to the house' as a sort of bedrock to what thoughts are built on.

[stryder]

Would you hear an inner voice in an anechoic chamber?

It's assumed by those that hear it, an inner voice is naturally your own. If however you were shielded from the myriad of communications frequencies, would you still hear an internal one or would you be empty of noise? (Which then leads to the question that if you hear nothing in that instance, who or what is responsible for the fake voice you usually hear?)

[confused2]

No mention of not hearing yourself thinking in an anechoic chamber in what follows..

Many myths surround these surreal and fascinating spaces. Some people claim that the longest anyone has spent in an anechoic chamber is forty-five minutes. They say any longer would drive you insane.

Effects on the human body
Being in extreme silence has an interesting effect. With no sound to distract you, your body becomes the sound field. If you spend some time in an anechoic chamber you will hear:

Your stomach rumbling and gurgling loudly
Your throat swallowing
The hissing from your breathing lungs
A low-pitched hum from your ears – louder than the effects of tinnitus
Your heart beating loudly – you may even become so aware of your heart that you feel your chest moving from the heartbeats
Not a pleasant experience. Some people can only endure a few minutes of this strange, overwhelming silence! However, the record certainly stands at more than forty-five minutes.

https://www.bksv.com/pt/knowledge/blog/s...20tinnitus

[Syne]

I generally hear my own voice as I read silently or write. So there's no chance that an outside influence could track what I'm reading/writing and when.

[C C]

[...] Is the voice I hear in my head while I'm reading the same voice as the one that moves my mouth and vibrates my throat to speak? [...]

I generally hear my own voice as I read silently or write. So there's no chance that an outside influence could track what I'm reading/writing and when.

That's another thing. How can the afflicted even know that they're really reading if the words aren't privately sounded? Are images corresponding to the descriptions still evoked? Do they actually read out loud all the time -- would that be a key indicator of someone having anauralia?

If not, then I'm starting to feel that the validity of this might be more akin to the deliberate pretenses or delusional self-deceptions of dissociated identity disorder than fact.

There's the outward behavior of staring at a book or screen or newspaper to indicate that "Well, I guess must be reading", and the contingent external action of commenting on the content to someone else to indicate that the brain was indeed "silently" processing. But still, sans the reading out loud...

EDIT: Given that the sensory-based visuals of the words themselves are sufficient for the reading apprehension of "deaf since birth" individuals, then no accompanying sound (either private or public) would apparently be necessary for an anauralic person, either. "Internal deafness" could even be a fitting expression for what anauralia refers to.