5 Jul 2023

Our Changing World – Anauralia, the lack of audio imagery

From Afternoons, 3:35 pm on 5 July 2023

Most of us go about our lives presuming that other people’s brains work much like ours. But sometimes, that’s just not the case.  

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Photo: RNZ

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The mind’s ear is an example – the auditory equivalent of the mind’s eye.  

Most of us have it. We can imagine sounds like a dog barking, an ambulance siren, we can sing songs, we can talk to ourselves in our own voice.  

But others don’t.  

Just under 1% of people are estimated to have a totally silent mind. It’s not a defect, or a disorder, just a variation in how human brains work.  

What is it like to experience the world in this way? And what strategies are people without the mind’s ear using to process and store information, to self-talk, to imagine the future?   

Listen to the episode to meet the team of psychologists trying to figure this out.   

To learn more: