Inner voice

[tech_vaibhav_eee]

I was just thinking...and i had this thought...is the inner voice which we all talk to for real??
I do not mean spiritually....i mean is it technically a sound wave??
If yes, then how does it reach our ear??
If no, how do we hear it then??

Please do not ignore my question thinking it to be non-technical...

 

[dknguyen]

Are the images we see when we day dream actual light waves? Obviously not. If software on your computer is typing words onto the screen for you, does that mean your buttons on your keyboard are actually being pressed? Obviously not.

So, it is not a real sound wave or else other people would hear it too. It's just the brain is simulating electrical signals similar (but not the same) to what the ear produces and then feeding those signals back into itself. It's like a self-controlled hallucination with audio only.

I don't know if you actually talk and have discussions with your inner voice. There's nothing my inner voice knows that I don't already know so no need for discussion. I just vocalize things in your head to lay them out for you. Sort of like how I write something out when planning instead of visualizing it all in my head.

 

[tech_vaibhav_eee]

Thanx 4 a speedy reply...
The reason i asked this was that..
If this so called " inner voice " actually produce some electrical signal, cant this electrical signal be processed to produce actual sound wave....

 

[dknguyen]

We're a long way from that, but sure why not. Keep in mind they aren't the same signal and the electrical signals aren't actually audio signals. There's probably a WHOLE lot of other crap mixed into that electrical signal.

It'd probably be way easier just to hook up two brains directly so somsone else can experience what you are experiencing because they are the same medium. It'd be more useful too since there's way more that goes on when we think than just "speaking to ourselves" there's images and all sorts of other crap. It would be way harder to filter out the audio parts of thoughts and then translate it into audio. It'd be like converting video graphics into audio ...doesn't work so well.

 

[tech_vaibhav_eee]

yup..i agree that connecting two brains is an easier option....but processing someone's inner sound and producing actual sound could give speech to a dumb person...I think the hardest thing is to find out what kind of signal it actually is.....
nyways thanx for 4 replying to my stupid questions.......was just curious to know

 

[tech_vaibhav_eee]

hey..posted the same question on some other forum as well and someone gave me the following link...http://www.parallelnormal.com/2007/11/15/s...reading-device/....
wow...

 

[blueroomelectronics]

If it was possible someone would be selling them by now.

 

[dknguyen]

A thought controlled prosthetic might be easier than to make a mind-to-audio translator. But we are a long way off from that (the mind-reading anyways...we're getting closer to the mind-controlled prosthetics). I don't know which one would be more important as I do not know what it is like to lose a limb, or to lose my voice.

 

[duffy]

inner voice which we all talk to

Um, all talk to? I think you might benefit from reading Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". Most of us don't hear voices like that. Jaynes proposes it is an indication of a more primitive form of human consciousness than the form that most of us enjoy today.

 

[tech_vaibhav_eee]

Um, all talk to? I think you might benefit from reading Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". Most of us don't hear voices like that. Jaynes proposes it is an indication of a more primitive form of human consciousness than the form that most of us enjoy today.

I think u have misunderstood what i mean by the inner voice...i dont mean the one which is shown in movies as a duplicate of oneself and we actually talking to him...
I actually mean the voice we hear when we are thinking inside our head or reading something...lol

 

[j.friend]

you here voices when you are reading?

 

[duffy]

You mean like a stream-of-consciousness thing? Would you really talk to that?

 

[Hero999]

Most of our inner thoughts are non-verbal.

Do you think more in words or pictures?

I think, I think more in words but sometimes when I'm thinking about a circuit, I visualise it which is far more powerful; once I can visualise something I can fully understands it but I often have a hard time doing it.

In reality I believe most people don't think in words most of the time, a lot of the time it's pictures and sometimes it's neither words nor pictures. Sometimes I can solve a problem without visualising or figuring it out in words. Some people call this intuition but I don't, I think of it as non-verbal, non-visual reasoning.

 

[confounded]

I think theres 2 states.
When i first read something it is as if i am reading aloud but only i can hear.
However if i'm reading a book or whatever after a while when i am fully concentrated i no longer am deafened by my own voice and words flow to pictures or the meaning of words much more quickly and i dont hear my voice so much as i think what is being described by the words.
In the 1st state i think it would be possible to produce sound waves, but not the 2nd. The 2nd state is too subjective to be understood by others.
What i exactly feel and think of when i read the words 'cold blue sea' for example is probably different to what anyone else in the world feels and thinks.
I would bet you have to determidly shout words in your head to get a signal that can be converted to sound waves.

 

[Hero999]

i'm reading a book or whatever after a while when i am fully concentrated i no longer am deafened by my own voice and words flow to pictures or the meaning of words much more quickly and i dont hear my voice so much as i think what is being described by the words.

That never happens to me, I find reading a chore, it's not something I do for pleasure. I don't understand how some people find in pleasurable.

I always read non-fiction and I prefer looking at schematics and diagrams than sifting through pages of text.

 

[MrAl]

Hi,

This is interesting because not too many years ago if you tried to categorize
this as electronics related it would not have been possible, but today there
are brain implants that can read some of the fundamental brain signals and
operate machinery like prosthetic hands with fingers. Unfortunately this
requires surgery, so it's more or less for those who really need it right now.
A chip is installed in the brain in the region that is responsible for that kind
of movement/control and it is wired to a computer. The computer algorithm
interprets the brain signals and decodes into the correct movements via the
machinery. In this way when a person 'thinks' about opening and closing
the hand it really does open and close, even though the person has no
real hand anymore.
Would this work with a person that was born with a defect in that area of the
brain? Probably not, but at least it works with people that once had hands
and so that one area of the brain was at one time working ok.

 

[duffy]

Yes, and if you are actually hearing sounds it seems to reason that the parts of the brain responsible for processing speech would light up in an MRI or something.

 

[3v0]

If we did our thinking in words we would not search for the right words to express our thoughts.

I suspect that language and thinking are not totally independent. We may not think in sentences but our vocabulary influences the process.

3v0

 

[OutToLunch]

...I just vocalize things in your head to lay them out for you.

get out of my head!

 

[Mark68]

I was just thinking...and i had this thought...is the inner voice which we all talk to for real??
I do not mean spiritually....i mean is it technically a sound wave??
If yes, then how does it reach our ear??
If no, how do we hear it then??

Please do not ignore my question thinking it to be non-technical...

I don't think that you can ignore the spiritual side of it, because you are in fact dealing with spiritual questioning.

I believe that we are a spirit, we have a soul, and we live in a body....If you only try to get answers from the body (brain, electrical impulses, etc...) and ignore the soul and spirit you will never get the answer to your question. Intuition, communion with God, and conscientiousness are all related to the spirit. The soul is emotion, volition (will) , and self. The body is matter so it only deals with the material aspect.

So the spirit is God conscience, The soul is Self conscience, and the body is world conscience.

Think about it...if all we had to think with or reason with was a brain. How could we have an inward voice. If the brain was all that was thinking...how can we ignore every whim of thought. If I choose to do something that's wrong for instance...doesn't the voice of conscience come out against my decision to do it. Only after I choose to ignore it's plea through resisting and reasoning does it take a back seat.

So the point being, the will (soul) is the deciding factor, becuase the will chooses what voice it will listen to. Right, Wrong, or Indifferent.

Just my 2 cents worth!