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I agree it's possible to distract yourself with your inner monologue, but I wouldn't say it's due to the volume of your inner voice. I liken it to people who c

I agree it's possible to distract yourself with your inner monologue, but I wouldn't say it's due to the volume of your inner voice. I liken it to people who claim they can visualise a photorealistic image right in front of them, superimposed over the real world (yes, I've met such people). If you ask them to visualize a black box that grows to take up the entirety of their vision, blocking everything else out, they have to admit that they can't do that. Because while they've identified what they're experiencing as "vision", it's not that. It's something else that kind of feels like vision, but they lack the language to articulate it.

metalcrow 3y ago
Hm. I mean, you're right it's for sure not the same as vision, but it's also reasonable that if people say they can do this sort of thing, even weakly, and others say they can't, there is likely some sort of fundamental difference between them. Regardless of what, exactly, that difference is.
core_dumped 3y ago
I think this “vision” they see or the “sound” we hear in our heads is literally the deeper mechanisms of those parts of the brain being either more or less strongly connected to our overall perception system. We can’t override the direct sensor feedback, but we can cause enough self-induced “backpropgation” to affect the overall result we experience. In this case I also think it’s totally reasonable for some to not even have a “inner monologue” as there are stranger perception based mutations such as the one where you can’t recognize faces. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/face-blindness/#:~:text=Prosopagnosia%2C%20also%20called%20face%20blindness,to%20help%20you%20recognise%20people https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/face-blindness/#:~:text=Prosop....