[ArmenArtist (OP)]

Why can we talk, sing, impersonate other people, have sarcasm, rythem, melody and etc....with the silent voice that is in our heads.   Why is that voice in our heads so powerful, meaningful, and yet...unheard?

How do we picture things in our heads that we do not see?

If somebody says, "That hot girl from that movie you like is gonna have a blind date with you," you will picture her so much..that you will get so excited...but you dont 'see her' you rather...picture her...how?

Also, if somebody says, "where should we go eat?" You can have strong opinions about what kind of food you are in the mood for, and what you are not...without smelling or tasting it...why?

How can our brains process the information about our senses...without sensing them...with just as much conviction as if we are experiencing these things?

[ArmenArtist (OP)]

Maybe sight, sound, taste, smell and etc., do not need a physical manifestion of neuronal excitation in our brains...to be 'real' and 'felt.'

Maybe the real sight, sound, taste, smell and etc., are physical things that have neurotransmitter 'codes' or mathamatical equivolents.

Maybe a certain sound, i.e., our own personal thinking voice that is in our heads, can sing a song, and those notes and the way our head's voice sounds...is made up of chemicles that give us a feeling...and that feeling is like the shadow of a real physical sensation....but only a shadow.   Also, I used to have synaethesia, hearing music in color, and ive learned things about sensations since it left.

Ive also learned about audio equipment, mics, amps and etc.

Interestingly, what makes something 'quality' vs not of quality...is a sparkle to the sound...that can only be described as a 'natural high' that it gives you, as you feel your own serotonin or dopamine or endorphins attaching themselves to the signal to make it...from your 'high' -- sparkle.

Thus, better quality audio = the most vivid neurotransmitter connection to the source.

Is this because what we are after is NOT the sound at all, but the high we get, the high that we seek beyond all sensations, sights, sounds and smells?

[artistic]

I've been thinking about this since I was young. I keep picturing something in my mind, but that picture is not in my line of sight.

[artistic]

I've been thinking about this since I was young. I keep picturing something in my mind, but that picture is not in what I see.

[Gaia]

Interesting question. I've always wondered how people who were born profoundly deaf 'think' - obviously they can!!! When I think I tend to use 'the voice in my head' but one of my friends, who is dyslexic, thinks in pictures.

Gaia  xxx

[simon_alfie]

From the way I visualise things (or audiolise music) I would say that a similar or the same part of the brain is used.

When I visualise some thing my concentration switches from my eyes to the picture in my head. My eyes are still open and I would notice any major changes in my vision, such as a light turning on/off or an object coming towards me. Part of the brains processing has been switched over to visualising. The same is true for music and or sounds, I block out the real noise to concentrate on my imagined sound.

Where the visualised picture or sound comes from is another question. My theory on where the image/music comes from would be that another area of the brain stimulates a part of the visual/audio system with a "false" input that gives you a similar experience to your real senses.

These are obviously my philosophical thoughts on the subject, and not a proven scientific fact.

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by Gaia

Interesting question. I've always wondered how people who were born profoundly deaf 'think' - obviously they can!!! When I think I tend to use 'the voice in my head' but one of my friends, who is dyslexic, thinks in pictures.

What is meant by 'think'?  There is probably a similar question with regard to imagining a future event based on past experience.

Why do we need to think in pictures, or sounds, or smell?

Do we generate these phantom senses as a means of triggering our decision making processes, or do we simply make the decisions by sub-concious means, and generate the phantom sensual experience a an incidental by-product of the sub-concious process?

I would suspect it is somewhere between the two.  I suspect that we do generate high level (i.e. post processed) sensual information (e.g. you remember what was said, but you do not remember the sounds themselves, and probably do not even remember what language it was said in – and from that, you may then later try and explain it by believing you have actually recalled the sounds, but those sounds were synthesised from the high level knowledge and not from a direct recollection of the sounds themselves).

George

[lightarrow]

quote:Originally posted by ArmenArtist

How do we picture things in our heads that we do not see?

If somebody says, "That hot girl from that movie you like is gonna have a blind date with you," you will picture her so much..that you will get so excited...but you dont 'see her' you rather...picture her...how?

Also, if somebody says, "where should we go eat?" You can have strong opinions about what kind of food you are in the mood for, and what you are not...without smelling or tasting it...why?

How can our brains process the information about our senses...without sensing them...with just as much conviction as if we are experiencing these things?

Our brain is able to receive electric signals from our senses receptors, elaborate them, doing something else and then give out electric signals to our body. Having said this, let's make this "Gedankenexperiment" (hypothetical experiment):

let's take a living brain, put it naked in an appropriate nutritive solution and in such a way it keeps functioning and living regularly. Then let's connect all the nerves that comes out of it to an analog/digital converter and then to a computer, so that electric signals from the brain are elaborated as we like from the computer; the computer then gives electric signals as output, that we send back to the brain, through the nerves that were connected to all sensorial receptors.

What do you think the person in the brain will experience?
He/She will: see, hear, touch, smell ecc. and will "think" to live in a strange world, exactly the one we have programmed with the computer.

So, the question is: What Really is Reality?

[neilep]

I have many voices in my head...most of them uninvited !!...in fact If I could find a way to pause the play button in my head I may actually get a decent nights sleep !!


This is fascinating.

In some cases the voices in ones head can be almost as true to us as if we were hearing them first hand from someone standing next to us. I think the same goes for all the senses which we can 'impersonate ' in the brain ie: taste, smell, touch, sight, hearing.

In fact the one place where all these 'imaginary' senses seem very real are in the sleeping world...in dream land...


As far as thinking is concerned, we all do it all the time...we even do it without realising it. It's a basic cognitive ability to deal with our surroundings on a fundamental level. To reason and conclude about our surrounding environment. Language is not needed...it's a ' basic instinct ' that bridges all languages and species.



It seems totally reasonable that we would be able to impersonate, sing, dance, fly , have super powers in the confines of our head for the very reason that our imagination is not limited to our physical constraints. Your mind is the one place you are truly free.

And what really is reality ?..Oh my gawwwwd !!..Isn't this the biggest question ever that philosophers have been asking for thousands of years ?...this is a ginormous topic....absolutely huge.........It's like first we have to establish our own personal reality and confirm that it's the same reality as everyone else's. And how do we do that ?.............. I know that the cup of coffee on my desk exists..(I think I do)..I can hold it, drink from it...but how can I prove to you that it exists..?..that it is real ?...I can't ....you have no proof from me that this cup exists ?..even if I were to show you a picture of it would not be proof enough........Perhaps even my own realisation of it is not proof enough for me ?.....that then boils down to the problem of proving my own existence to myself......oh gawwwwwwwwwd !!...stop !!...*drinks from unreal coffee cup *



Men are the same as women, just inside out !

[ArmenArtist (OP)]

There is a difference between dreams...or halucinations...where we can 'hear' voices...from our thoughts, which are not actual sensations...i.e., not halucinations or sensory information, and yet, it is just as real to us as a halucination or something real.

You are referring to matrix like ideas, which is fine, but what i am saying is things we do not halucinate, or experience in reality, but we know it is...the melody of a favorate song, or the flavor of a favorate food.

I believe it is a shadow, or phantom, or the reality that exists.  

Now, a pitch or octaves, and sight...are made up of waves.

Our thoughts thus, need to connect with waves, waves in a pure form.

Now, if we can find women attractive and a song hummable with our thoughts...then the 'waves' are a direct line to our male hormones and our personal taste in music.

Thus, we can break things down into their basic waves...via brainwaves?

And these waves...with neurotransmitter connections...are codes for real things.

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by ArmenArtist
Our thoughts thus, need to connect with waves, waves in a pure form.

Now, if we can find women attractive and a song hummable with our thoughts...then the 'waves' are a direct line to our male hormones and our personal taste in music.

Thus, we can break things down into their basic waves...via brainwaves?

And these waves...with neurotransmitter connections...are codes for real things.

Sorry, you have totally lost me here.

What are 'waves in pure form'?

Certainly, it may well be that there are many electrical clocks that are critical to the workings of our brain, just as electrical clock (oscillators) are used in the functioning of most modern computers.  On the other hand, these oscillators, if they exist, are not related to hormones (excepting if the hormones may effect the frequency at which the oscillators work).  Certainly, there is evidence that drugs such as LSD may effect the speed of signals through the brain, and thus is likely to effect any oscillators operating within the neural systems of the brain.

But I am not at all sure what you are thinking of with regard to these waves (let alone 'pure waves').  Are you talking about small local electrical, or electrochemical, oscillators (operating at the level of a single, or a small number of, neurons); or something on a grander scale?

George

[ArmenArtist (OP)]

electrochemicle, if that means they relate to neurotransmitters.

By waves, i mean if we can hum a song with thoughts, and a song has pitches -- octaves -- which are made up of frequencies...frequencies that are waves...then our "silent" or waveless thoughts...need to have some relationship to the real waves that a hummable song is made up of.

If a certain pitch is 150Hz and another is 5Khz, then when we hum it with our thoughts, we need to connect, via our awareness and consciousness, to those waves, without actually hearing physical waves that exist in our surroundings.

Thus, i am wondering if this could relate to our brainwaves, because brainwaves relate to neurochemistry.

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by ArmenArtist

electrochemicle, if that means they relate to neurotransmitters.

By waves, i mean if we can hum a song with thoughts, and a song has pitches -- octaves -- which are made up of frequencies...frequencies that are waves...then our "silent" or waveless thoughts...need to have some relationship to the real waves that a hummable song is made up of.

If a certain pitch is 150Hz and another is 5Khz, then when we hum it with our thoughts, we need to connect, via our awareness and consciousness, to those waves, without actually hearing physical waves that exist in our surroundings.

Thus, i am wondering if this could relate to our brainwaves, because brainwaves relate to neurochemistry.

No, I don't believe the pitch of music has anything to do with any oscillatory system within the brain.  The rhythms of the music may possibly relate to oscillatory processes, but the pitch itself (i.e. the 1509Hz, and 5KHz frequencies) are discerned by different hairs within the cochlea in the inner ear, and the brain merely identifies which hair has been triggered by the sound.  Similarly, when we produce the sound in our mouth, we never actually vibrate anything directly at 150Hz, or 5KHz, but rather we create shapes within our mouth and vocal tracts that are caused to resonate at the required frequency.  Nonetheless, the rhythms and beets of the music are created by discrete actions under neurological control, and thus they may well relate to oscillatory processes within the nervous system.

George

[ArmenArtist (OP)]

you are correct.

I by no means am saying that we are open jars, and that soundwaves beam directly into our brains like a resonating drum.

However, sound IS a wave, and pitches ARE waves.

What i mean is...a frequency...is a frequency.

Our brain does use brain chemistry to interpret and etc., but at the end of the day, a soundwave is a soundwave, and out brains need to be connected, somehow, to that frequency.