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The 'Loudness' of Our Thoughts Affects How We Judge External Sounds (sciencedaily.com)
The "loudness" of our thoughts -- or how we imagine saying something -- influences how we judge the loudness of real, external sounds, a team of researchers from NYU Shanghai and NYU has found. From a report: Its study, titled "Imagined Speech Influences Perceived Loudness of Sound" and published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, offers new insights into the nature of brain activity. The research project was conducted by Tian Xing and Bai Fan from NYU Shanghai with, David Poeppel and Teng Xiangbin from NYU, and Ding Nai from Zhejiang University. "Our 'thoughts' are silent to others -- but not to ourselves, in our own heads -- so the loudness in our thoughts influences the loudness of what we hear," says Poeppel, a professor of psychology and neural science. Using an imagery-perception repetition paradigm, the team found that auditory imagery will decrease the sensitivity of actual loudness perception, with support from both behavioural loudness ratings and human electrophysiological (EEG and MEG) results.
that's a pretty ballsy statement
That explains a lot, the voice in my head is loud as hell, explains why everyone is so quiet.
MMmmm mmm mmmmmmm mmm mmmm mmmmm mm mm mmmm mmm mmm mm MMMMM MMM MMM M M M MM M M
mmm mm mmm mm mmmmm mm m mmm mmm mm mm mmmm
When the voices in my head starts yelling at me it sounds like everyone is yelling and they don't stop until I put down the baseball bat.
I once spent three days on Smith Island, the quietest spot in the Eastern US, to see if an extended time of quiet would help soothe my stress. No cars. No stores. Just the fishing fleet leaving pre-dawn and returning at dusk. In between, nothing but the sound of the surrounding Chesapeake Bay and the wind on the willows by the shore.
Every day I was there, I could detect fainter and fainter sounds. On my last day, as I was sitting on the front porch staring at the water, I noticed a very distinct hum. I looked all over for the offender, only to discover that it was the electric motor in the ceiling fan overhead.
I don't think that my physical hearing senses became sharper, obviously. I think what happened is that my mind was able to perceive them because they weren't competing with all the other sounds I was filling my head with. I can well imagine that pre-loading your perceptions with internal talk will make you less observant of external sounds, just as this study shows.
Oh, and the rest cure worked really, really well. I try to get at least a couple of days of complete silence at least once a year now. Very restorative.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
In a shocking, awesome turn of events, President Trump has decided to punish awkward nerd homosexuals everywhere by suggesting that the solution to school shootings is to take away their lazy, violent, escapist fantasies of power. In response, survivors of the Parkland shooting were like "but... I play Cale of Dooty.. nuhhhhh" and then looked like a fucking retard, because they expected a handful of their faggy jew classmates were "totally gonna dictate how things should be".
BZZZZZT -> WRONG
This is the best of all worlds. Garbage human beings will continue to be slaughtered by guns (as they deserve to be) and the fat weirdos who play with babygame toys will have their fantasies taken away, leaving them even more frustrated and child-like. Hopefully a large number will die from the emotional suffering alone.
Hail Satan on this glorious day.
>"Our 'thoughts' are silent to others -- but not to ourselves"
I was surprised to learn that people actually "hear" their own voices in their head. I don't hear anything - my thinking has no language associated with it, mostly just visual imagery. If I am not around people, I don't have any spoken language at all that day. I grew up with two spoken languages in my house, and I was coding at a very young age.
Anyone else here like this? I can't imagine what it would be like to hear myself think!
LOUD: The Insecure & Unintelligent
quiet: The intelligent
Unrighteous: raucous crowed
Righteous: Jesus goes off to pray in quiet.
Your instincts were correct. It was just always politically incorrect to state the obvious.
[ all bold caps* ]...tells me that when I think out loud all the time, it can be distressing to those around me and that I should be more considerate, especially in confined spaces, like elevators, washrooms, and aircraft. That way, I won't get any more restraining orders. [ /all bold caps ]
* /. wouldn't let me post this comment in its original all bold caps form. Spoilsports! :(
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
I have Tinnitus so bad from being around jet engines and explosions I can't even hear my thoughts most of the time.
I have to read them.
It is like being 15 feet from an idling jet all the time.
'Nuff said!
I wonder if this has any ramifications for misophonia (the hatred of particular sounds) or hyperacusis (increased sensitivity to sounds)? If I've understood the summary correctly, it leads one to think that some kind of CBT, meditation or similar that might control or reduce the volume of our internal voice might go some way to reducing sensitivity to external unwanted sound.
Yeah, uh, I don't think any part of Shanghai is located on New York soil.
What is your take on door slams? We have these "door closers" that let the door close gently until the last 10 cm, when the door is given a slam, giving a loud "kerchunk" of metal slapping against metal of the door handle latches.
One door on my hallway got considerably quieter when a maintenance person adjusted its closer to not slam so hard, but it took him a lot of tinkering and he also use some special spray lubricant to damp down the metal-on-metal slap.
I thought of adjusting the slam of the other doors with one new closer requiring a special hex wrench to do this with the other closers being ancient models for which there is no info on the Web. No, the door slams don't silence the voice in my head, but they sure as anything shakes a person out-of-the-zone during coding or reading a technical article where one is trying to think through multiple ideas in one's head.
+2 to 3 dB across the spectrum as measured by my wife the speech therapist and a bunch of other nerds back in high school. I've also been called out for mumbling ever since kindergarten.
A few years ago I had this epiphany that they might be connected. I can often hear conversations across a room, so I assume that my own speaking can also be heard at a similar distance, so I keep my voice down. Of course I can't be heard by most people, but those I'm speaking with think I'm mumbling. I've been working on this, but its really hard because our baseline model for other people's abilities is our own.
The thing that really annoys me, is that even if most people can't do what I do, someone might, so I find it really nerve-wracking to have a semi-private conversation in a public space. But no one gets this!
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates