This article is from the WeChat public account: Nutshell (ID: Guokr42) , author: EON, editor: travel knowledge initiatives, Cloud, title figure from: the movie “Ex Machina”

Don’t read this article in a hurry, pay attention to one detail first, how do you read it.

You may have a faint voice in your mind, reading every word you read. Perhaps that voice will still ask you: what exactly is this article trying to say?

For most people, this inner monologue ability is justified, it seems to be the “factory configuration” of human beings, and it is assumed that other people have this ability. However, some people don’t seem to understand all of this-they can’t talk to themselves.

So when both parties finally realized each other’s existence, the social network suddenly boiled.

Inner silence is like a mystery

The argument stems from a tweet. A Twitter netizen named Kyle said: “Some people think like ‘hear’ sentences, while others only have abstract nonverbal thoughts, which must be consciously dictated.”

This tweet has been retweeted more than 26,000 times. Most netizens said that they could hear the voice: “I have a never-ending mind in my mind.”Podcasts”, “If you tell me the word ‘elephant’, I might think of words instead of pictures”, “Everything I do every day is done in a dialogue between several different voices “…

People who have no inner monologue claim that they are more accustomed to thinking conceptually. Some people complain that, as a person who does not think through language, to organize his own thoughts, he must say or write down, which is very annoying. In another post on Reddit, some netizens also said: “I can’t hear myself talking in my head, (My thoughts) It ’s more a connection of images, emotions, and abstraction. “Someone said that when they saw that people in the movie had dubbing, they thought,” If only this is really good “…

After reading these discussions, I have the same mood as a netizen: “Suddenly forget how to think.”

I suddenly forgot how to think | lilyandchloeofficial

Is the brain really empty?

What’s going on without an inner monologue? Regarding this phenomenon, we can only see people’s own words, and there is very little related scientific research. But we can first understand the following points:

1. Some people may not have inner monologues

Does anyone without a monologue really exist? Most likely it is.

In an article published in Consciousness and Cognition (Consciousness and Cognition) In the research of the journal, the researchers did an experiment: let 30 people carry the buzzer with them. After the buzzer sounded, the participants needed to write down What was in my mind before? After a few weeks of experiment, the researchers found that some subjects were talking to themselves 75% of the time, and some subjects did not have a single heart during the experiment. Monologue. However, the results of this experiment are still controversial, for example, people report that they have no inner monologue, or it may be because of introspection ability (the ability to examine their mental state ) Insufficient.

2. Inner monologues and visual images are not mutually exclusive

When people think, inner monologues and visual images are not mutually exclusive. Researchers at Harvard University pointed out in a paper published in (NeuroImage) in Neuroimaging, whether or not participants used the “inner heart” “Monologue” thinking, they will create accompanying visual images, which means that visual thinking is deeply rooted in our brains.

Researchers used behavioral experiments and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study these two modes of thinking. In behavioral experiments, participants need to imagine an image (or imagine a sentence) based on a pair of words, and then answer the image (or sentences) how clear and vivid, and then answer the inadvertently generated sentence (or images) How clear and vivid. Researchers have found that whether images are produced intentionally or unintentionally, there is no difference in sharpness and vividness.

Researchers conducted further research through fMRI and found that “in the intentional inner monologue, people have produced more spoken representations. However, whether they want to think through images or sentences, they produce visual images.” < / p>

3. There are no images in the brain of some people

More interestingly, there are no images in the brain of some people. In a recent YouTube video uploaded by a couple, the girls claimed that not only did they not have a monologue, they couldn’t even remember what others looked like, and they couldn’t imagine the scenes when reading the novel.

Blake Ross, one of the developers of Firefox browser (Blake Ross) This is also the case, he cannot “see” in his mind His father’s face, or seeing his bedroom when he was young, “always thought that” counting sheep “was a metaphor, and he was taken aback when he knew that other humans could really” see a sheep “in his head.

When insomnia counts sheep, does anyone see the sheep? | John Churchman

This phenomenon of not being able to visualize things in your mind is called heart blindness (Aphantasia, or imagination disorder) . For people with heart blindness, thought is more like a “concept map.” Neurologists have estimated that 2% of the population suffers from heart blindness.

4. Deaf people use sign language and “voice” to think

In addition to images, symbols, and concepts, deaf people often use sign language to think. However, those deaf people who have been trained to speak can sometimes think in the language they have learned—their brains usually imagine the sound of these speeches. Similarly, those who are not all deaf will “hear” the sound in their heads.

Asheley Clark Fry was born deaf, but trained to speak. In the video, Asheley reads the words of the card, her father guesses the words | Signed With Heart

It is worth mentioning that, for a long time, deaf people are considered to have no inner monologues and therefore do not have high-level cognitive abilities such as abstract thinking. However, as more research began to focus on the abstract reasoning and nonverbal reasoning capabilities of deaf people, and people gradually realized the richness of sign language, the misunderstanding of deaf people’s mental retardation was gradually eliminated.

Talk to yourself

To explore the nature and function of inner monologues, we can first look for answers from children.

At a very young age, children are used to speaking aloud and talking to themselves when performing cognitive tasks. This kind of self-talking helps children think about what they are doing and plan what to do next. This is what psychologists say in private: (private speech) . The theory of Russian psychologist Levi Vygusky (Lev Vygotsky) states that Whisper is a transitional stage and will gradually transform Monologue inside . However, the whisper does not disappear after this transformation is completed. It can continue into adulthood and is a valuable tool for self-regulation and motivation.

Psychologist Charles Vernihoff (Charles Fernyhough) believes that the internalization process studied by Wigowski has led to at least two different inner monologues: one is expansion and the other is compression . In the former form, the inner monologue retains many of the acoustic characteristics and turn-turning of the external conversation. (turn-taking, know when to start and end the conversation) One sentence) . The compressed inner monologue is what Wigowski calls “thinking in pure sense”, and the acoustic characteristics such as tone and accent of spoken language are deprived in this form.

In an interview with Atlantic Monthly, Vernihoff said that the different types of inner monologues are exactly in line with its different functions. “It plays a role in motivation and emotional expression, and maybe we also understand ourselves. Aspects play a role. ”

Whispering words from childhood will gradually turn into inner monologues | Daniel Stolle

In general, inner monologues involve our cognitive development, executive function, and mental state. It is not only related to self-reflection, critical thinking, and emotions, but also to some mental disorders. In severe cases, such as those with schizophrenia, people treat the inner monologue as an instruction from the outside, that is, “phantom hearing”. For patients with autism spectrum disorder, the development of inner monologues may be disturbed or delayed.

Neuroimaging shows that when people talk to themselves inside, it’s as if they’re in a real conversation. Some studies have found that inner monologues activate the brain network from the frontal lobe to the auditory cortex, which is similar to the area of ​​the brain that we activate when we actually speak. If the inner monologue is conversational, in the activated brain region, it also includes the theory of mind (ToM) Reasoning about the relevant area, which indicates that we may also respond to inner monologues from the perspective of others.

In actual speaking, we must not only think about what we say, but also pay attention to our own voice, and at the same time control the movement of the mouth and tongue, so in addition to the above-mentioned brain areas, there are also motor cortexes involved. There is a hypothesis that people who do not have a monologue may lie in this problem, and cannot activate the above brain regions without activating the motor cortex.

When speaking, we must both think and control the movement of our mouths and tongues, and pay attention to our own voices | UCSF Neurosurgery

Despite various explanations in psychology and neurology, our understanding of inner monologues is not deep enough. Part of the reason is that research is too dependent on people’s subjective reports and the limitations of functional magnetic resonance imaging technology itself. However, at least one thing we can reach is that inner monologues are closely related to our thinking and our sense of self.

As the philosopher Hannah Arendt put it, “Beginning with Socrates and Plato, we usually refer to thinking as when I started a silent conversation with myself.” Many people who have no inner monologue still live well. . However, for those who have a monologue, if they lose the voice around them, they should be lonely.

References

[1] Alderson-Day, B., & Fernyhough, C. (2015). Inner speech: development, cognitive functions, phenomenology, and neurobiology. Psychological