The inner voice that builds your fragile world – 10/09/2023 – Luciano Melo
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“In the beginning was the Word. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made. Life was in him, and the life was the light of men.” Through words that come out of our mouths, or that we write, our verbs narrate the world. However, our conjectures are invisible and silent sentences, audible only in our minds. Our brain is capable of creating electrical signals that produce sensations, without there being an external stimulus. This resource generates internal speech, and takes consciousness to a meaning.
Comprehension and verbal expression are products of the function of well-defined brain centers in the left cerebral hemisphere. However, rich language requires much more space. Knowledge is associated with words thanks to the connections that unite these nuclei with the brain periphery, in dynamic and reconfigurable flows. So that we understand the word “walk”, there is work in the brain sector responsible for movements. In order for us to understand “bell”, the brain area that takes care of hearing is called upon; “blue”, areas of the visual cortex; “cheese”, olfactory cortex; “sadness”, the core of emotions, the amygdala. The meanings of words spread across many neuron channels.
The human brain supports the vast architecture of language, because the voice was necessary. Question of evolution. Natural pressure benefited our ancestors who organized societies, and words helped people cohesion. The social nature of language equips us with semantic resources so that we can infer about the minds of others by putting names to characteristics. We turn this ability within ourselves, we have the reflections that create the concept of what is our own.
Naming favors conscious perception. For example, naming musical components, such as rhythm, style, notes, turns these nuances into concepts that can be studied. We label people as an economical way to understand them. Obviously, not everything needs to be verbalized to be perceived, but words bring opportunities to think about abstract categories, and about allegories that are not natural. Aspects such as beliefs, attitudes, personality traits or personal virtues can hardly be brought to consciousness without self-verbalization. Our internal conversation names thought, and brings out the ability to be aware of being aware.
Mental representations —of experience, inferences, or imagination— incorporated into memories are transformed into the words of our internal voice. The flow of memories and mental representations escape the control of will and consciousness. This means exactly what you, dear and perceptive reader, have already noticed: the sentences formed in our mind, which make us conscious, are by-products of unconscious and automated neural processes.
We can better understand the impact of the internal voice when we analyze the consequences of its absence. Helen Keller was born deaf and blind. By the time she learned a language, the first half of her childhood was already over. In her book “The World I Live In,” she wrote: “Before my teacher came to me, I didn’t know who I was. I lived in a world that wasn’t a world. No I hope to describe that unconsciousness adequately, even though I am aware of that empty time.” “I did not know that I knew anything or that I lived, acted or desired. Since I did not have the power of thought, I did not compare one state of mind with another. When I learned the meaning of ‘I’ and ‘me’ and discovered that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness existed for the first time for me.”
Author Lauren Marks lost the ability to speak and understand speech because of a brain hemorrhage. The after-effects were not permanent, when rehabilitated, she wrote about the period in which she was unable to speak: “I had an empty mind, a mind adrift. I was incredibly focused on the present, with very little awareness or interest in my past or future. “. “My entire environment felt interconnected, like a cell in a large, breathing organism. I felt less like myself and more like everything around me. I find it very, very difficult to access a sense of self (personality and/or preferences) ) when you don’t have access to your own inner voice. The ego seems to be partly linked to the linguistic ability to express that ego.”
We are not sure whether these accounts mirror the pure consequences of absent self-talk. The mental state described by Hellen or Lauren may have more causes, such as other brain injuries, medications, and various sensory deprivations. And their reports may be contaminated by memory bias. However, it is possible that they described a constant psychic state in us, but unnoticed because it was eclipsed by words. The pre-cognition moment, which does not reach formal consciousness. The pillar of our reasoning, which allows us to know and recognize, without being able to describe and explain. Also the basis of a lot of misunderstandings.
References:
1. Martinez-Trujillo, Julio. “Corollary discharge: Linking saccades and memory circuits in the human brain.” Current Biology 32.14 (2022): R774-R776.
2. Zwaan RA, Radvansky GA. Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychol Bull. 1998 Mar;123(2):162-85. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.123.2.162. PMID: 9522683.
3. MARKS, Lauren. A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life. Simon and Schuster, 2017.
4. Skipper JI. A voice without a mouth no more: The neurobiology of language and consciousness. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2022 Sep;140:104772. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104772. Epub 2022 Jul 11. PMID: 35835286.
5. The Project Gutenberg eBook of the world I live in, by Helen Keller [WWW Document]nd URL 〈
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