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 of those and diagnosed ADHD...however one ADHD podcast I listen to talks about how people with it don't have an internal monologue. Maybe it was just that one person and she assumed everyone was like her.

I know when I'm in a bad way emotionally because my inner voice says awful things to me. I used to have to tell it/myself to 'be nice to MostInept'.

Yes I do all of those.

Yes to all and ever since I was a child I can only get to sleep by playing out a whole imaginary story in my head. It's changed over the years but the one I've got going on now is at least five years old. I add a bit on every evening. It's like a soap opera in my mind. The people look real. They have their own voices. Clothes. If I'm imagining it's summer it feels warm. If it's raining I can hear and smell the rain. If someone touches me I can feel it. I'm awake - just with my eyes closed quiet in bed. Then the next morning I wake up remembering where in the story I fell asleep.
I believe it's called maladaptive day dreaming? It incorporates all of the above.
But I can summon that when I want. Unless I'm in a room with lots of distractions. Real life noise like the beeping of a supermarket till or an office phone ringing freezes my brain and I can't think of anything.
I'm not neurotypical and always thought it had something to do with that. But I didn't realize it wasn't normal until I was about 10

Yes all of those

[quote bruffin]@AmbushedByTheCake
My friend could close her eyes and see a sunset with all the colours. If i close my eyes i see black but think about a sunset in my imagination[/quote]
Don't you think they are just different perceptions of the same thing - I mean she can't really see it with her eyes, can she?

Yes to all - with the added bonus of exploding head syndrome!

@longwayoff

Dream in colour. Everyone surely? What else is there? I don't understand. I have very mundane dreams, like everyday life, until it goes a bit weird and I realise I'm dreaming and wake myself up. But lack of colour? What do you see?

Do you hear things too? I never heard voices in dreams it was a sort of telepathy until a discussion with a work colleague who is bilingual and dreams in both languages.

About a week later I had a dream and people spoke.

I sometimes dream in BSL, and I get confused because the people signing don't know sign language in real life.

I also know I'm dreaming most of the time.

Yes I can do all those things and I definitely don't have adhd. I did that online test thing that someone posted for it and I was way below the score for it. My thoughts never feel overwhelming and I can completely clear my mind when I need to. I just have a good imagination- or that's what my mum says anyway! I also have very vivid dreams, lucid dream and am prone to maladaptive daydreaming when I'm by myself.

For those who cannot ‘see’ people/ things in your minds eye, how do you describe them?
How do describe an incident to the police?
You send a friend to the super market you use all the time, they ring and ask where the bread is, can you direct them to the bread, do you have to look for it every time you go shopping?

So, I could describe my husband's physical characteristics in terms of quantifiable information - e.g. height, weight, hair colour, style etc. I can't really say how his features are arranged on his face.
I could direct anyone to where the bread is, because I navigate by 'landmarks'.
I know the full layout of the shop, but it's v hard to picture in my head.

@bebanjo

For those who cannot ‘see’ people/ things in your minds eye, how do you describe them? How do describe an incident to the police? You send a friend to the super market you use all the time, they ring and ask where the bread is, can you direct them to the bread, do you have to look for it every time you go shopping?

I can’t visualise things in my head like that.

Instead what I remember is the relationships between things. I’ll feel a sense of direction or shape about things. I don’t ‘see’ it in my mind. But I feel the idea of it. I’m really good at direction based things. I can navigate places and don’t forget the way.

I remember all sorts of details and the connections between them. I piece things together from all sorts of clues.

There’s a lot of narration in my head. But also vague impressions of sensory experience. Not like synaesthesia or something. More a set of not that well formed ideas. I know what my children look like, for example,. I can’t picture them in my head but I have a sort of vague idea about what they look like and I can think through and almost feel particular details. It’s hard to explain.

I’m awaiting an ADHD assessment.

@MostIneptThatEverStepped

Yes to all of those and diagnosed ADHD...however one ADHD podcast I listen to talks about how people with it don't have an internal monologue. Maybe it was just that one person and she assumed everyone was like her.

I know when I'm in a bad way emotionally because my inner voice says awful things to me. I used to have to tell it/myself to 'be nice to MostInept'.

That’s interesting. I’m never sure what people mean by an internal monologue.

Do they mean they hear it?

Much of my thought seems to be narration (words) and vague ideas. I kind of narrate things to myself and that’s how I think things through. Or I’ll do it by talking to someone else. I find my husband really frustrating because he gets annoyed at me for saying things and explaining things. He gets arsey and makes me feel stupid and annoying for ‘telling him things he already knows’. But I’m actually thinking it through and making the connections. As an aside, it’s often not things he knows; it becomes very apparent that he doesn’t actually know he’s just being an arrogant dick (prime example: I couldn’t talk through things about pregnancy and Labour with him because he apparently knew it all because he had two children already; then I sat and marvelled at him asking the midwife if the placenta is delivered first.)

But I don’t have a voice over narrator doing it for me. I know I’m doing it.

I can do all except - d) Can you play a scene from a movie/TV episode etc? - I can only do this with films I've watched a few times over the years.

I'm not diagnosed with anything.

All of those all of the time and sometimes a few at the same time.

Do you mean that some people can’t picture people when they think about them? I can even make people laugh in my images of them.
My mind exhausts me.

Yes , but not so much the last

All, especially g). Though 'smell' is a tad tricky as I have anosmia.

There is no stillness in my mind. I hadn't really realised this wasn't 'a thing' til a MN post quite recently, where many others also expressed surprise that others might actually not be thinking of anything at a given moment.

It explained how often, sitting quietly with DH or my adult DSs, I'd ask 'hey, what are you thinking?' And they say 'oh, nothing'- and I'd go 'WHAT'? How can you literally be thinking of nothing? How is that even possible?

Why is your mind not racing around, looking, assimilating, comparing, inventing, extrapolating; go go go? How is that possible?

But, apparently, it is! Who knew?

And re g), my constant internal monologue tends to be parallel, verging on 'fantasy'. It's not a narration of what I'm doing.

My mind is very often elsewhere.

a) I can summon a picture but I’m not sure what you mean by change it.
b) The only voices is can hear I’m my head are Morgan Freeman and Stephen Fry.
c) No
d) No
e) Yes
f) Yes
g) Yes
I can also generate quite complex and detailed fictions in my head with lots of characters but without images or voices, I just have the “script” and the emotions.

I can remember people's faces but can't picture them, if that makes sense? I can't form the image of my kids in my mind but it's know what they look like it's just not there

Yes to all except f

I’m really surprised reading this. I don’t really understand how people can’t see picture people and hear them talk. Isn’t that just how memories work? My grandparents died 20 years ago but I can visualise their faces, voices, house, furniture through memory/recall. Is that not the same for everyone?

An internal monologue ? That sounds exhausting

You mean there’s a voice constantly talking?
Eg ‘I’m sitting on the sofa. Now I’ll feed the cat. Better get the kids ready Oh I forgot to wash up etc etc …’

That would drive me mad

Comehomemax - possibly the case for most people but I have realised how different to most people I am in that I can't do any of that. Its awkward when someone says "which health visitor did you have" and I have literally no clue unless I remember something about them ( they like books/same coffee shop etc) I wouldnt be able to descibe unless particulalry large/small/tall... or some unusual characteristic.

I have prosopagnosia and don't recall faces at all. If you cut out faces of famous people I won't recognise them...

Yes, all of them and I'm amazed that everyone can't.

Not the smells but the rest, yes.