WEBVTT - Do You Have an Inner Monologue? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.480 Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey 0:00:06.559 --> 0:00:09.840 brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam Here, have you ever thought 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:13.880 about how you think? Do you? For example, tell yourself, 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:17.000 don't forget to take out the trash, Then hours later, 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:19.640 when you hear the garbage truck rolling by, think how 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:23.000 could I have forgotten that? Is there a constant talking 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:25.479 to self throughout the day going on in your head. 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:29.639 A lot of people do use language based chatter to 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:33.760 organize and focus their thoughts. However, it turns out that 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:37.440 some people don't have this kind of inner monologue at all. Instead, 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:41.239 they may rely more on visualization, for instance, seeing themselves 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:44.280 placing the trash bag in the bin. Others employ a 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:48.280 combination of these techniques. People on both sides of this 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:51.920 inner monologue divide have a hard time imagining another way 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:54.080 of being, to the point that it's sort of freaked 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:56.800 everyone out. Back in February, when the concept was passing 0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:00.960 around the Internet, we spoke with one Rustle Hurlbert, a 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:05.400 psychology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. For decades, 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:10.160 he's been doing experiments on people's inner experiences. There are thoughts, feelings, 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:15.080 and sensations regarding the online kerfuffle over inner speech haves 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:17.840 and have not, he chuckled a bit and said he 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:20.959 frequently hears people claim that they have an ever present 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:24.319 inner monologue, but his experiments show that this is not 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:28.520 always true. But rather than argue with them, he says, well, 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:33.080 let's find out. His tests began long ago as a 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.560 graduate student in the early nineteen seventies. He began wondering 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:42.120 how scientists could investigate subjects pristine inner experiences, experiences that 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:45.360 are in your present consciousness before your brain has tried 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:47.600 to make sense of them or assigned them some sort 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:52.480 of interpretation. Hurlbert explained, the object of my research is 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:55.800 not to explore inner speech or inner monologue, or whatever 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:58.800 you want to call it, but to explore your experience 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:02.960 as it actually is is. He thought that an alarm 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:05.880 of some kind might work, but back then there were 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:09.440 no cell phones or pagers. So Hurlbert, who has an 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:13.240 engineering background, designed and patented a device that beeped at 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:17.160 random intervals. Each time the beeper went off, he asked 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:20.120 subjects to make notes about their experiences in the moment. 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:24.320 As students what about their days. These beepers would go 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:27.520 off at random times. They were instructed to try to 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:30.720 clarify what was happening in their minds at that instant. 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:34.600 The beepers went off only a few times. This was 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:37.440 intentional so that the research subjects would forget that they 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:41.240 had them and thus not contaminate their thinking processes with 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:46.720 thoughts about the experiment. Later, researchers asked the students questions 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:49.320 to better understand how the students were thinking when the 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:54.919 beepers sounded. Were they visualizing something, experiencing a tactile sensation, feeling, 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:59.079 and emotion. This line of inquiry is called descriptive experience 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:04.160 sampling or d e S. Harlbert said one key takeaway 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:07.040 was that quote you can't expect a good answer on 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.280 the first day. Essentially, it takes a day or two 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:12.800 of d e S training before people find ways to 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:16.240 focus on and express what they're experiencing in a given moment. 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:20.000 In his research, he found that most subjects struggled to 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:23.280 articulate the way they were talking to themselves. When he 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:26.600 asked them for these specific words or sentences, many came 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:30.160 up blank. He said, And in the course of doing that, 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:33.600 you and I together, I guess you would say we decide, well, 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:36.080 I thought I had inner speech, but I really don't. 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:40.680 His studies show that subjects talked to themselves inwardly about 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:44.320 of the time they were sampled, but that many never 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:47.240 experienced inner speech, while others had it up to seventy 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:50.520 five percent of the time. The median percentage of time 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:56.520 that subjects were sampled experiencing inner speech was just Harlbert 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:58.920 has worked with other researchers to use d E S 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:01.920 questioning while so objects were inside m R I scanners 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.600 study of to be fair just five subjects. The scanners 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:09.400 show that the area of the brain associated with certain 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:12.320 topics lit up when subjects said they were thinking about 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:18.040 those things, providing a physical link to the abstractions of thoughts. Still, 0:04:18.160 --> 0:04:21.839 scientists are grappling with a lot of uncertainty what causes 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:25.599 an inner monologue to begin with. Some research shows that 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:29.480 people often use more inner verbalization when they're under pressure. 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.640 Perhaps they're rehearsing answers to job interview questions, or maybe 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:36.800 they're trying to focus on a competitive task like athletics. 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:41.080 Among people who do report inner monologue, they tend to 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:45.080 perceive those voices as their own. That self talk generally 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:48.640 has a familiar pace and tone, although the exact voice 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:52.560 might change depending on whether the current scenario is happy, scary, 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:56.839 or relaxed. Sometimes they might use whole sentences, other times 0:04:56.880 --> 0:04:59.400 they might rely on condensed word play that would be 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:05.360 meaningless to anyone else. But what causes inner speech? Mark Scott, 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:08.520 a researcher at the University of British Columbia, found that 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:12.280 there's a brain signal called corollary discharge that helps us 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:16.480 distinguish between sensory experiences we create internally versus those from 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:20.000 outside stimuli, and the signal plays a big role in 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:23.200 internal speech. It also plays a role in how our 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:27.640 auditory systems process speech. You see, when we speak, there's 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.440 an internal copy of the sound of our voice that's 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:35.000 generated at the same time as our speaking voice. As 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:38.960 for the online debate regarding inner monologue, Hurlbert understands that 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:43.039 online commenters have taken strong positions on the matter. Some 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:46.719 people simply can't imagine not having an inner voice. Others 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:49.880 are taken aback by the idea of constant internal chatter. 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:54.000 He said, half of those people are probably right and 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:56.599 half of them are not right about their own inner 0:05:56.600 --> 0:06:01.279 monologue characteristics. The main conclusions are inc the people don't 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.640 know what's in their own experience, and he said level 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:08.800 of confidence is not a good predictor of whether someone 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:13.960 has an active inner monologue, but could more accurate measures 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:16.880 of our thoughts be on the way. An ongoing project 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:20.480 called alter Ego at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:24.800 successfully demonstrated that a head mounted gadget can read people's thoughts. 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.960 The device interprets subtle neuromuscular signals that people make when 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.800 they internally verbalize certain phrases or words. Although it's still 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:35.680 a prototype, it's been demonstrated to be capable of accuracy 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:44.040 of more than Today's episode was written by Nathan Chandler 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:46.320 and produced by Tyler Klang. For more on this and 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:49.600 lots of other thought provoking topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:52.640 Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:55.680 for my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:57.480 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.