How is inner language generated? The science of thinking and “talking to yourself”

The inner language it constantly inhabits the mind of each of us. It is an invisible dialogue with ourselves that appears from the first years of life, capable of appearing as a monologue that resonates with our own voice, a debate between multiple different positions, or sometimes even a chorus or the internalization of someone else’s voice. We don’t know how it really originates because it could be linked to the “difficult problem of consciousness“, but neuroscience shows that, even in silence, the brain speaks and listens as if it were actually doing so. When this delicate balance is brokenthat voice can stop seeming to be ours and, according to some theories, generate auditory verbal hallucinations.

What is internal speech and how does internal speech develop

When we talk about inner language we mean that little voice in the head that is “speaking without really speaking”: ours linguistic thinking. We don’t know how it really originated, but we are starting to understand many things about it development and on neural dynamics who accompany him.

For example, we know that language, well before it is born in our heads when we are children, is most likely used as social tool. It means that, as the famous psychologist Lev Vygotsky thought, first we use it to communicate with others and only then do we make it our own, we internalize. The crucial phase of transition between the external language, used socially, and the internal one, would be represented by “private language“, that moment in development in which 2-3 year old children talk to themselves out loud while they are engaged in some solitary activity. Therefore, from social languagea private languageto get to inner language.

How inner language works: the neurobiological explanation

On the floor neuralinner speech lights up most of the areas that are active when we actually speak: left inferior frontal cortex (including the famous Broca’s area); premotor and additional areas for articulatory planning; higher temporal regions for phonological representation. Don’t you find it interesting that, even without moving his mouth, the tongue or vocal cords, the motor and premotor areas are still active of language? Likewise, theWernicke areathe one associated with comprehensionas if we were listening and understanding what we ourselves are saying in the depths of our minds.

But the cerebral curiosities don’t end there. When the inner language has the form of a dialoguetherefore presupposes more “inner voices”, a significantly greater activation is observed in an extended and bilateral network (compared to the internal language done in monologue), a network that involves the higher temporal turns right and left, areas typically associated with social contexts. “I contain multitudes“, wrote Walt Whitman, and it seems that he was not wrong.

When the mechanism jams: not recognizing your own inner language

The reason why inner language doesn’t scare us is we feel as if generated by usit’s not as banal as we might think (“of course it doesn’t scare me, it’s mine!”). When we generate internal language, the motor system generates a second tracka “carbon copy” that sends to the auditory areas, which then are located ready to receive the voice inner without this taking us by surprise: they were informed in time by the motor system which, in doing so, calms the system, causing the signal to be labeled as self-generated.

Sometimes, this mechanism does not work properly. When this balance is altered, in some cases the internal voice can be perceived as not self-generated and contribute to phenomena such as auditory verbal hallucinations: in practice the system is “surprised” by the presence of an internal voice. However, the evidence on specific neural mechanisms is still mixed and does not explain all cases.