Can you do the following inside your head?

[AmbushedByTheCake]

... or brain.

Various conversations recently with people, and following my ongoing ADHD research, I'm interested how people can recreate sensory detail/movements/memories etc. Can you do the following:

a) Summon a picture of a specfic person/place thing? Can you change the picture?
b) Can you 'hear' the voice of that person/sound in your head
c) Can you play a piece of music in your head? Some or most of it?
d) Can you play a scene from a movie/TV episode etc?
e) Can you run an animated or moving scene in your head? (like a horse trotting, or a waterfall flowing I suppose
f) Can you recreate or imagine smells in your head?
g) (finally!) do you have a voice running in your head lots? A sort of monologue or tangent?

Disclaimer: curiousity only! Not a scientist - questions clumsily worded. Trying to understand my own brain - I think I can do most of the above or some version. I can hear sounds and picture things vividly, and I get some sense of a smell (for example bacon frying) I can 'rememeber' the taste/smell of it.

Interested to see what this is like for others!

Yes to all, I am autistic & constantly run a commentary in my head.

I'm NT and do all of these, honestly thought everyone did. Sone of the replies are fascinating.

Yes to all. I can play 'clips' from my past in my head

@PhDornotoPhD

No to all of them apart from g

Wow really??? So you don't ever have a piece of music stuck in your head??? Omg

I'm absolutely ASTONISHED that some people can't do these! That some people can't hear a song in their mind or see their child's face in their mind for example. Absolutely astonished

Yes to all, diagnosed ADHD

@ouch12345

Reading this thread is so bizarre, I never knew people could actually do this in their head? So using an example someone said before about seeing an apple and then picturing it in your head, is that not the same as having a photographic memory? If I try and picture something it's just black.

So you can't picture your child's face? Or imagine what your nails would look like with bright red polish on for example? Wow

I can’t do any of them

Yes to all except B. I can't hear people's voices in my head unless it's somehow distinctive like nasally or a very flat tone.

I can do all of the things listed in the OP. I describe myself as having a chaotic brain that only quiets when I have something to focus on, that I enjoy.

Another thing I have is that if I've heard a strong accent then my inner monologue will use that accent for the next few hours, sometimes days, until it sort of wears off!

@PickAChew

"OhLordyWhatNow
Yes to all.

Not RTFT so not sure if anyone else has mentioned this; I also 'hear' food as musical notes. So citrus is a high note, chocolate is mid tone, and meat like beef in a stew is a low bass note.

That is synaesthesia. WHAT THE OP describes is like for like, though, eg being able to conjour up all the senses involved in eating a bacon sandwich (right down to my chin itching because some grease has dribbled on it!)"

I am aware; and knew what the phenomena was called.

That's why I said 'yes to all', and then said I could also hear food, in addition to the 'a-g' list that the OP wrote about.

I also read with voices. My voice is the narrator, then the characters have different voices.

When I read your post PickAChew's voice sounded quite sneering was that your intention?

Yes to all, eyes open or closed. I can change and embellish things as well, for example, adding instruments or voice to music and changing colours or clothes or sequences, or story lines.
I wish my nearly constant inner monologue would shut up. Actually, it does when I am replaying stuff or fantasising, or pathworking

I can't say how neurodiverse I am or am not, as i have never been assessed but I am severely dyscalculic.

I can do all apart from F.

I can do all. I'm hyperphantasic.

8 met a man recently who is aphantasic. I struggle to get my head round how different his inner life must be to mine.

Yes to all - I have ADHD.

Yes to all except the last one [g] no monologue/voices.

@AmbushedByTheCake

Addition: If what I have said makes no sense, how would you describe what is going on in your head?

Just like to mention what's going on inside my head;

Have you ever been searching for something in the cupboard under the stairs, only to knock over the metal Cadburys Roses tin full of screws, carpet tacks, rusty sockets, IKEA Allen keys, at least three cuphooks, a pencil and about five million assorted nuts and bolts so that it rolls into the hallway before crashing open and dumping its contents across the floor? Can you imagine the sound and the mess?

Yeah, that. That's my head. And I have to work through it.

I am in a neurodiveese family and looking at adhd and autism myself. I can't do most of that!! However I also have prosopagnosia (also common with autism) and can't recognise faces well or picture faces really. I can't describe people really.

Yes to all, esp that damned voice. It never shuts up. I thought everybody had that voice

I also cant "visualise" at all. Like whether one item would go with another or what a room might look like another colour etc.

My mind is chaos though. So many thoughs and emotions and anxiety!

Yes to all those. Can't everyone?

When I picture something in my head it's not like a picture in the forefront of my head, it's like the image is in the back of my mind, like it's not an image but I can see it.

If you told me to imagine my living room, it doesn't look like a photograph, but I can see it, if that makes sense.

@AmbushedByTheCake

... or brain.

Various conversations recently with people, and following my ongoing ADHD research, I'm interested how people can recreate sensory detail/movements/memories etc. Can you do the following:

a) Summon a picture of a specfic person/place thing? Can you change the picture?
b) Can you 'hear' the voice of that person/sound in your head
c) Can you play a piece of music in your head? Some or most of it?
d) Can you play a scene from a movie/TV episode etc?
e) Can you run an animated or moving scene in your head? (like a horse trotting, or a waterfall flowing I suppose
f) Can you recreate or imagine smells in your head?
g) (finally!) do you have a voice running in your head lots? A sort of monologue or tangent?

Disclaimer: curiousity only! Not a scientist - questions clumsily worded. Trying to understand my own brain - I think I can do most of the above or some version. I can hear sounds and picture things vividly, and I get some sense of a smell (for example bacon frying) I can 'rememeber' the taste/smell of it.

Interested to see what this is like for others!

No Yes Yes No No No Yes

@YouCantTourniquetTheTaint

When I picture something in my head it's not like a picture in the forefront of my head, it's like the image is in the back of my mind, like it's not an image but I can see it.

If you told me to imagine my living room, it doesn't look like a photograph, but I can see it, if that makes sense.

If I think about a room I am 'in the room', I guess you'd describe it as akin to wearing virtual reality goggles, except the graphics are better and I'm aware of the whole room all at once, and sense/ feel the emotion of being in the room.

So when I think of the last time I saw my grandfather I see him in a hospital bed, and I'm aware of the whole room, the sense of light, and the atmosphere. I can replay our conversation.

Yes to all of them but sometimes stuff gets muddled as I'm a little synesthesic too

Certain words and numbers have certain colours or sounds in my muddled mind a few have smells or tastes

If I read a book or a short story I can visualise it as a film or tv show, and vice versa

Musically I can summon up most music that I know on cue but then I've always been quite musical though. I freak myself out on that at times! I can hear a few bars of something I've not heard in DECADES and instantly recognise it - that's particularly true when it's a song as I'm very tuned into voices

Sometimes when I'm watching a tv show or film if an actor first "appears" with their voice only my ears prick up and I'm instantly "I know that voice!" Happened most recently with William gaminaras appearance on Death in paradise (I wasn't looking at the screen just heard the voice and that got my attention) and I've not seen anything he's been in for YEARS.

I've even had that happen in work situations when I've been in jobs where I had colleagues at other sites and not met them until several months into the role and then I meet them at a group situation and I can instantly pick them out by voice

With this in mind I tried watching a few episodes of "the masked singer" but I was put off by the silly guesses people were making when it seemed obvious to me quite early on who they were (the ones I'm familiar with anyway, there were a couple of surprises simply as I wasn't already familiar with those singers)

In terms of why

I have ocd which is supposedly due to at least partially malformations in the part of the brain that is also affected in asd's

I've not been tested but I've also had a few hcps suggest I may be on the spectrum myself. I'm almost 50 so I reckon it's rather pointless at my age but I have spent my life finding it very difficult to negotiate social situations, I'm known for my "directness" and while I can "do" sarcasm it was very much learnt rather than natural. I can disappear down learning rabbit holes quite easily (my internet search history and then million apps usually open at once on my phone prove this! It's usually only when the phone starts glitching I think to check and close things down but they're all linked to one main train of thought) and get tunnel vision and a few other things might also indicate that I may not be neurotypical.

Various quizzes I've tried assess me as more neurodiverse than neurotypical how much varies.

My brain is NEVER quiet I wish it was at least sometimes even in my dreams life is awkward and stressful and anxiety inducing

I have tried so many things over the years to quiet it - meditation, hypnosis, meds, mindfulness, various therapies...

Similar to pps I spent most of my life assuming everyone could do all this stuff then when I slowly realised they couldn't I found that very disconcerting.

It's very very annoying and exhausting!