It would be very high overhead if different brain regions used an encoded form of spoken language as the communication protocol. For most of us, most of the ti

It would be very high overhead if different brain regions used an encoded form of spoken language as the communication protocol. For most of us, most of the time, the introspective portions of the brain responsible for consciousness may be re-interpreting the messages they observe as something language-like, but these portions of the brain almost certainly don't duplicate all of the language processing wiring necessary for the language centers of the brain to produce and interpret language. In short, I suspect that the "language" of thought is likely mostly a post-hoc rationalization/interpretation performed by some parts of the brain. Learning to read Chinese, I've many times had the experience of recognizing and understanding a character, but momentarily being unable to remember either the corresponding English or Mandarin words. (This usually happens when studying written Chinese tired after a long day of work.) I'm biased, but I think even more interesting than the inner voice of dogs would be the inner voice of infants and toddlers. My young son is too young to speak or walk, or even appear to understand even one word. (Though, it's hard to tell; maybe he understands a handful of words.) Yet, he's clearly very curious about the world and seems to understand social interactions.