People will hear tens of thousands of voices throughout their lives. Some are as frightening as the sound of footsteps in a dark corridor in a TV series, and others are as annoying as mosquitoes who never know where they are when they sleep.
But there is a voice that will always be with you.
It emanates from your brain, even if you don’t speak aloud, it still sounds in your brain.
It may be when reading silently, reading a book, thinking, or singing without a sound…
That mysterious voice in my head will appear.
Where does this sound come from? !
In fact, this may be the predecessor of your self-talking when you were a kid. Scientists call this voice inner speech.
According to Vygotsky’s child development theory, self-talk is almost a common feature of young children’s development, usually at the stage of language expression development around 2 to 3 years old.
Talking to yourself often appears in the form of commenting on ongoing activities. Does it look like your brain is commenting in real time while reading a book silently?
The relationship between inner speech and language is very close. Neuroscientists have discovered that when we speak loudly, the Broca area in the left lower frontal gyrus of the brain is activated.
What’s interesting is that as long as we have inner speech, even if we don’t speak, Broca’s area is also active, as if we are really speaking, but all this is only done in the brain.
There is a hypothesis that when we want to speak, the Broca area will send a signal to our auditory system, telling the auditory system what we are going to say. So regardless of whether it will be said in the end, our auditory system has already received the information we want to say, and the inner speech has also been produced.
As we grow older, the feedforward inhibition that controls whether the sound is emitted gradually matures, so we can autonomously control the sound emission activity, and the phenomenon of self-talking gradually decreases. But a series of activities in the brain continue, so there will be voices in the brain that we are wondering!
Scientists have also discovered that inner speech is closely related to our mental state.
When there is too much negative content in your inner speech, the feeling of mourning may surround you. On the contrary, when your inner words are mostly encouraging and positive, then your whole person will be an upward little sun.
Isn’t it like someone praising you every day and criticizing you every day?
So remember to give yourself a hint every day before you go out: I am awesome today!
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