#166 - Meet the Neuroscientist Who Discovered That Some People Have No Inner Speech

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Johanne Nedergaard is the cognitive scientist who, with Gary Lupyan, named anendophasia: the absence of an inner voice. An assistant professor at Aarhus University and a 2024 Aarhus University PhD prize winner, she ran the first experiments testing what changes when the voice in your head goes quiet. The answer was far less than anyone expected.

Expect to learn: - The Missing Voice: why some people report no inner speech at all, and why nobody noticed - The Rhyme Test: they struggled with word lists and rhymes, until they said the words out loud - Mind Over Muscle: jam someone's inner voice and they push less hard on the bike - Heart Talk: raising your heart rate while lying perfectly still, using only words - The Control Question: why mental health tracks whether you can switch your inner voice off, not whether it's kind

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GS EPISODES MENTIONED Russell Hurlburt - No. 1 Inner Experience Expert: Inner Monologue, Aphantasia and How Your Mind Lies to You: https://youtu.be/j0gKl-g3DNg

Adam Zeman - The Blind Mind’s Eye: How Aphantasia Is Rewriting Consciousness ! Dr Adam Zeman: https://youtu.be/SgA2up6-Bok

Alex Hutchinson - Alex Hutchinson: The Lie That Unlocked Human Limits, Tricking Perception & Aphantasia!: https://youtu.be/YqqU4ckq8s8

GUEST LINKS Aarhus University Profile: https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/[email protected] Personal Site: https://johannenedergaard.github.io Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/johanneskned.bsky.social Nedergaard & Lupyan (2024), Not Everybody Has an Inner Voice: https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976241243004 Nedergaard et al. (2023), Mind Over Body: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2023.102472 Wallentin et al. (2025), Heart Talk: https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.70138

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TIMESTAMPS 0:00:00 Trailer 0:02:02 What Is Anendophasia? 0:04:19 The Viral Threads That Started It All 0:05:57 Four Experiments on People With No Inner Voice 0:07:12 Saying the Words Out Loud Closed the Gap 0:14:10 Can You Trust Your Own Introspection? 0:17:27 Detecting Inner Speech From the Outside 0:19:56 How Many People Have No Inner Voice? 0:20:54 Where Your Inner Voice Comes From 0:23:24 Is It Genetic? 0:26:06 Unconscious Inner Speech and the Aphantasia Parallel 0:30:58 Deaf People Sign to Themselves Silently 0:33:25 What Your Self-Talk Reveals About Your Sport 0:35:46 Jam Your Inner Voice and You Push Less Hard 0:43:45 Raising Your Heart Rate With Words Alone 0:47:12 Positive vs Negative Self-Talk in Sport 0:52:55 What Silent Minds Reveal About Thinking 0:56:13 Mental Health Is About Control, Not Content 1:02:23 Psychedelics and the Inner Voice 1:03:51 Can You Train an Inner Voice? 1:07:25 They Never Rehearse Conversations

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