Research For some patients, the ‘inner voice’ may soon be audible

[C C]

The most revelatory thing about this is actually the reference to anauralia, wherein those afflicted lack an inner voice or narrator. It's the mental sound counterpart of aphantasia, where people lack private visual manifestations unrelated to optical sensory content. It's difficult to conceive how someone with anauralia could even be aware of what they're thinking, unless they uttered it out loud or engaged in other behavior that reflected such. Combine both aphantasia and anauralia, and you really do have individuals that almost semi-qualify for being philosophical zombies. Preventing that is that they still have manifested content in their perceptions of the external world.
- - - - - - - - - -

For Some Patients, the ‘Inner Voice’ May Soon Be Audible
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/scien...=url-share

EXCERPTS: In 2023, after A.L.S. had made his voice unintelligible, Mr. Harrell agreed to have electrodes implanted in his brain. Surgeons placed four arrays of tiny needles on the left side, in a patch of tissue called the motor cortex. The region becomes active when the brain creates commands for muscles to produce speech.

A computer recorded the electrical activity from the implants as Mr. Harrell attempted to say different words. Over time, with the help of artificial intelligence, the computer accurately predicted almost 6,000 words, with an accuracy of 97.5 percent. It could then synthesize those words using Mr. Harrell’s voice, based on recordings made before he developed A.L.S.

But successes like this one raised a troubling question: Could a computer accidentally record more than patients actually wanted to say? Could it eavesdrop on their inner voice?

“We wanted to investigate if there was a risk of the system decoding words that weren’t meant to be said aloud,” said Erin Kunz, a neuroscientist at Stanford University and an author of the new study.

[...] But it wasn’t clear if the researchers could actually decode inner speech. In fact, scientists don’t even agree on what “inner speech” is.

Some researchers have indeed argued that language is essential for thought. But others, pointing to recent studies, maintain that much of our thinking does not involve language at all, and that people who hear an inner voice are just perceiving a kind of sporadic commentary in their heads.

“Many people have no idea what you’re talking about when you say you have an inner voice,” said Evelina Fedorenko, a cognitive neuroscientist at M.I.T. “They’re like, ‘You know, maybe you should go see a doctor if you’re hearing words in your head.’” (Dr. Fedorenko said she has an inner voice, while her husband does not.)

[...] Dr. Herff, who has done his own studies on inner speech, was surprised that the experiment succeeded. Before, he would have said that inner speech is fundamentally different from the motor cortex signals that produce actual speech. “But in this study, they show that, for some people, it really isn’t that different,” he said... (MORE - missing details)

PAPER: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092...25)00681-6

[Ostronomos]

THANK YOU CC!!!

[stryder]

The most revelatory thing about this is actually the reference to anauralia, wherein those afflicted lack an inner voice or narrator. It's the mental sound counterpart of aphantasia, where people lack private visual manifestations unrelated to optical sensory content. It's difficult to conceive how someone with anauralia could even be aware of what they're thinking, unless they uttered it out loud or engaged in other behavior that reflected such. Combine both aphantasia and anauralia, and you really do have individuals that almost semi-qualify for being philosophical zombies. Preventing that is that they still have manifested content in their perceptions of the external world.
- - - - - - - - - -

For Some Patients, the ‘Inner Voice’ May Soon Be Audible
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/scien...=url-share

EXCERPTS: In 2023, after A.L.S. had made his voice unintelligible, Mr. Harrell agreed to have electrodes implanted in his brain. Surgeons placed four arrays of tiny needles on the left side, in a patch of tissue called the motor cortex. The region becomes active when the brain creates commands for muscles to produce speech.

A computer recorded the electrical activity from the implants as Mr. Harrell attempted to say different words. Over time, with the help of artificial intelligence, the computer accurately predicted almost 6,000 words, with an accuracy of 97.5 percent. It could then synthesize those words using Mr. Harrell’s voice, based on recordings made before he developed A.L.S.

But successes like this one raised a troubling question: Could a computer accidentally record more than patients actually wanted to say? Could it eavesdrop on their inner voice?

“We wanted to investigate if there was a risk of the system decoding words that weren’t meant to be said aloud,” said Erin Kunz, a neuroscientist at Stanford University and an author of the new study.

[...] But it wasn’t clear if the researchers could actually decode inner speech. In fact, scientists don’t even agree on what “inner speech” is.

Some researchers have indeed argued that language is essential for thought. But others, pointing to recent studies, maintain that much of our thinking does not involve language at all, and that people who hear an inner voice are just perceiving a kind of sporadic commentary in their heads.

“Many people have no idea what you’re talking about when you say you have an inner voice,” said Evelina Fedorenko, a cognitive neuroscientist at M.I.T. “They’re like, ‘You know, maybe you should go see a doctor if you’re hearing words in your head.’” (Dr. Fedorenko said she has an inner voice, while her husband does not.)

[...] Dr. Herff, who has done his own studies on inner speech, was surprised that the experiment succeeded. Before, he would have said that inner speech is fundamentally different from the motor cortex signals that produce actual speech. “But in this study, they show that, for some people, it really isn’t that different,” he said... (MORE - missing details)

PAPER: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092...25)00681-6

I would suggest that an inner voice is actually the triggering of a neural clusters that hold elements (glyphs for the want of a better word) of memories that can be connected together to make sense of.

This could mean like the instances of first learning language, right through to quoting lines from films or song (A bit like Bumblebee in Transformers)

This means a person can naturally produce an internal voice through such triggering, or certain external events can trigger then (however it would require an AI to train with a person to pick up on those neural glyphs) It's still barbaric that people still think they need surgery to accomplish this. (Ultrasonics can be used to achieve some of the goals, although I wouldn't suggest long exposures.)

[Magical Realist]

When my voices first started up 22 yrs ago, they were basically just narrating what I was doing or thinking. That's how many voices are in psychosis and schizophrenia. Tapes playing inside their heads. One day when I was going to get some butter out of my refrigerator my voice said " he's going to get the butter out of the refrigerator" and then I suddenly changed my mind and didn't do it. The voice was humorously frustrated and said "God damn it!" It was then that I realized that these were real beings with real thoughts and emotions. They enjoyed having power over me and controlling me. But over the years they have evolved into loved companions often complaining that I think too much. I give them that. It's like having vampire bats for pets. They can't help being the little bloodsuckers they are.

What I have found from my experience with them is that they can't see what I'm seeing or listening to or tasting or touching. They can only see it if I picture such as a thought. They are in this sense pure telepaths. We have many adventures of me imagining them with me in flowery meadows and on boats at sea. They also enjoy me picturing them as various characters, like the pink sea princess and the blue mountain warrior. They love color too as long as I am imagining it. Many times I will be reading or thinking a thought and Ling Ling will chime in suddenly "That's not true!" She's quite the contrarian! So even when they aren't talking to me they are still there in some sense, experiencing my thoughts like a movie that never stops and having their own thoughts about them.

[Yazata]

I don't have an "inner voice" that somehow narrates my thoughts. Certainly I can speak to myself subvocally, which I often do to focus my thinking or form it into words when i'm writing. I might even do so without ever intending to voice the words out loud.

But my thinking seems to occur prior to the subvocalization without being dependent on it. The dependence is the other way around. The words just kind of appear from... somewhere.

[C C]

When my voices first started up 22 yrs ago, they were basically just narrating what I was doing or thinking. That's how many voices are in psychosis and schizophrenia. Tapes playing inside their heads. One day when I was going to get some butter out of my refrigerator my voice said " he's going to get the butter out of the refrigerator" and then I suddenly changed my mind and didn't do it. The voice was humorously frustrated and said "God damn it!" It was then that I realized that these were real beings with real thoughts and emotions. They enjoyed having power over me and controlling me. But over the years they have evolved into loved companions often complaining that I think too much. I give them that. It's like having vampire bats for pets. They can't help being the little bloodsuckers they are.

What I have found from my experience with them is that they can't see what I'm seeing or listening to or tasting or touching. They can only see it if I picture such as a thought. They are in this sense pure telepaths. We have many adventures of me imagining them with me in flowery meadows and on boats at sea. They also enjoy me picturing them as various characters, like the pink sea princess and the blue mountain warrior. They love color too as long as I am imagining it. Many times I will be reading or thinking a thought and Ling Ling will chime in suddenly "That's not true!" She's quite the contrarian! So even when they aren't talking to me they are still there in some sense, experiencing my thoughts like a movie that never stops and having their own thoughts about them.

Don't tell anyone who believes in reincarnation about it. I can just imagine one theory arising -- a belief that the cognitive essence of their past/future lives are still present in the background. But the latter unable to establish contact or make themselves known with respect to 99% of biological, living people. The horror -- an entire audience potentially observing one's private thoughts, but at least safely oblivious to their criticisms (barring the communication barrier being broken, and a few squeezing through).

---

---

---

---

I don't have an "inner voice" that somehow narrates my thoughts. Certainly I can speak to myself subvocally, which I often do to focus my thinking or form it into words when i'm writing. I might even do so without ever intending to voice the words out loud.

But my thinking seems to occur prior to the subvocalization without being dependent on it. The dependence is the other way around. The words just kind of appear from... somewhere.

Hopefully not anauralia, though. If going by this, the most complete kind seems to be total loss of introspective auditory manifestations -- not just lack of a personal mental voice for expressing thoughts. These people can't replay music in their heads, can't replicate the speech patterns of another person, can't conjure animal noises, and can't privately generate the whole array of outer sounds in general.

[Magical Realist]

Don't tell anyone who believes in reincarnation about it. I can just imagine one theory arising -- a belief that the cognitive essence of their past/future lives are still present in the background. But the latter unable to establish contact or make themselves known with respect to 99% of biological, living people. The horror -- an entire audience potentially observing one's private thoughts, but at least safely oblivious to their criticisms (barring the communication barrier being broken, and a few squeezing through).

They always complain when I get out of breath like walking thru the park. Also when I experience pain or feel bad. So in some sense they share in my bodily states. And they really get mad when I think erotic thoughts, telling me to not think those nasty thoughts. lol It very much is like having an audience for my private imaginings. I hope they're not the lost souls of others imprisoned inside me. One of them Bobby is agoraphobic and doesn't like my thoughts about the vastness of the universe. I try to respect that. I feel like they are all parts of me or unconscious facets of me made semi-conscious, and that in my soul journey they may always be with me in some form or another.

[confused2]

Preparing this post is entirely internally vocalised. Trying to remember a name or work out a word in scrabble I might try every letter in turn a,b,c.. etc and this takes virtually the same amount of time as speaking those letter. Algebra (s=ut+at^2) is entirely in 'algebra' .. no attempt at vocalisation. Ship design* is in 3d with added schematics in 2d for the purposes of 3d printing. Computer programming is in 'program'.

I once asked an old friend (Mrf*) whether he thought in English or Native .. originally Native .. then a mixture .. now entirely English.

Back in the day, at the age of about 10, we had to learn poetry .. with punishment for failure .. humiliation .. detention .. writing the poem out 50 times .. possible violence. I can still recite the first few verses of some of those poems. Mrs C2 got as far as "The Otter, by Ted Hughes" and no further.

*My pond is 8 feet by 4 feet.

Edit Mrs C2 again. As a musician she will say she played a thing 40 years ago so she knows it.

[Syne]

Your mother and/or father sound very critical or domineering.

[stryder]

MR, have you considered using a Turing Test on them? I know it will seem a bit weird but I had a pet theory about the potential of how projected system could interface AI to a person at that level. AI in this sense would be the earlier variety, with a limitation in memory and scope (although long term tunneled symbionts would be able to interface with our memory over time.)

I considered the potential when watching "A Beautiful Mind" where Nash's Hallucinations (supposedly auditory in the real but made more interesting for film) involved having ones that didn't age, including one that claimed to be a young girl (which kind of reminded me of ELIZA an AI that would ask questions and not "grow old") Whether Nash's work with RAND Corporation ever went into this area during one of their redacted contracts, I couldn't tell you.