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Original poster

Can you do the following inside your head?

401 replies

AmbushedByTheCake · 16/02/2022 20:44

... 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!

OP posts:
LighthouseLass · 16/02/2022 22:58

Ach sorry forgot to say I don't have a monologue, it's more visual/feelings than language.

RebeccaCloud9 · 16/02/2022 22:58

@FatCatThinCat everyone can smell books!(unless they have problems smelling anything) It's a replicated smell in some candles for example and people (book lovers!) often cite it as their favourite nostalgic scent. New books smell of print and adhesive, old books smell mustier.

Just Google what do books smell of.

SmellyOldOwls · 16/02/2022 22:59

@FatCatThinCat

Another sensory anomaly I was told about is smelling books. I'm not convinced on this one, but our autism consultant once told me that she was fascinated by the fact that autistic people can smell books and NT people can't. WTF! Surely everyone can smell books

I started testing it out with the people I know and sure enough the only ones who could smell them were the ones I very much suspect are also autistic. I'm still not convinced though.

I must be autistic then. You'd think I'd have noticed by now Wink
coconuthead · 16/02/2022 23:00

Yes and I also 'see' time (spacial sequence synesthesia) so the days weeks months and years in the past are always in the same place and I stand on a calendar type thing and then the future months days weeks months years decades are in the other direction. I am NT as far as I'm aware

SmellyOldOwls · 16/02/2022 23:02

[quote RebeccaCloud9]@FatCatThinCat everyone can smell books!(unless they have problems smelling anything) It's a replicated smell in some candles for example and people (book lovers!) often cite it as their favourite nostalgic scent. New books smell of print and adhesive, old books smell mustier.

Just Google what do books smell of.[/quote]
School books have such a wide variety of smells. New jotters smell totally different from Biff, Chip and Kipper for example. Big maths textbooks have the most distinctive scent!

I love the smell of the magazine rack in petrol stations Blush

BogRollBOGOF · 16/02/2022 23:05

Yes to all.
Smell is the weakest and I can summon an essence of some smells.

My internal monologue is loud and incessant if not occupied by reading or music, real or ear worms.

DS1 is very neuro diverse. DS2 is very much like me and easily distracted by the busyings of his own brain. I do wonder about ADHD/ dyspraxia for me. It looks like DS2 is dyslexic.

The DCs clearly get earworms... for some unknown reason the past couple of days have echoed with Duh de de de deduh duh from The White Stripes 7 Nation Army. I've had to find it and play it because they've now put it in my head. Some ear worms have clear triggers. Some are very random.

Some of my best friends are neurodiverse. We have wonderful circular conversations that have the same recurring start point before looping around in about 5 directions before getting to the intended point from about 2 hours earlier Grin

AlwaysLatte · 16/02/2022 23:05

I definitely have all those, I assumed everyone did!

ClumpingBambooIsALie · 16/02/2022 23:06

Yes to all, except that my mind's voice is usually more of a mind's ticker tape, i.e. wordthoughts are in textwords, not soundwords. This leaves space for the perpetual earworm soundtrack to play alongside 😐

UselessASD · 16/02/2022 23:06

All of them.

C) I can sing long pieces in my head.
when I hear a piece of music from a famous singer/music it’s never their voice - I don’t ever hear Gloria Gaynor singing I will survive it’s always me.

When I re create a to programme in my head I hear the actors - so I’d hear the voice of John Cleese for Fawlty Towers.

Almost constant inner monologue.
I’ve got autism.

0wlnoises · 16/02/2022 23:07

Yes to all of it.

Lysianthus · 16/02/2022 23:08

@itsevolutionbaby

Yes to all. I am neurotypical.
Me too. What does it mean?
MrsSkylerWhite · 16/02/2022 23:09

All of those. Thought everyone did?

ClumpingBambooIsALie · 16/02/2022 23:09

@FatCatThinCat

Another sensory anomaly I was told about is smelling books. I'm not convinced on this one, but our autism consultant once told me that she was fascinated by the fact that autistic people can smell books and NT people can't. WTF! Surely everyone can smell books

I started testing it out with the people I know and sure enough the only ones who could smell them were the ones I very much suspect are also autistic. I'm still not convinced though.

I'm sceptical of that, but I'm fairly sure that it's mostly autistic people who could tell you what all the different sorts of books taste like.

Source: much childhood paper-eating.

ExtremelyDelighted · 16/02/2022 23:11

Yes to all of it. Neurotypical but from a very neurodiverse family.

thegreylady · 16/02/2022 23:11

Yes to all of them and I tell myself stories at night when I want to go to to sleep. When I was young I would try to detach myself from my thoughts by saying,”Who am I? What am I?” to myself and it usually worked.

TheLizardQueen · 16/02/2022 23:11

Yes to all of them!! My mind drives me mad, I can’t get a minutes peace from it!! As soon as I try to sleep the chatter and the songs start and I can’t shut them off! Good to know I’m not the only one !!

buddhasbelly · 16/02/2022 23:12

I'm very jealous of folk thag can picture things when they close their eyes. I have a job that requires me to be visually creative. This would help a lot!

I'd also love to be able to picture people. To see expressions on people's faces that aren't captures in photographs.

I close my eyes and see nothing but I get a feeling when thinking about xyz person.

I went through quite a lot of trauma when I was young. My DH when we discovered I couldn't see anything asked if maybe it was my brain's response to trauma so I couldn't see things. But i think lots of people can't see anything. So who knows!

DrCoconut · 16/02/2022 23:17

All except b. And especially c. I remember tunes from years ago in detail and have perfect pitch. 2 of my DC are ND, one may be and I have my suspicions about myself.

Drawerofcrap · 16/02/2022 23:19

Funnily enough, I used to be able to do almost all of these and had a very good visual memory/recall, eg, imagining being on a beach, seeing faces, etc, but lost it all at least 10-15 years ago. I'm 50 now. Not sure what triggered the loss of these abilities.

patchysmum · 16/02/2022 23:21

I can't do any of them, is there something wrong with me? the only voice I have in my head is my own

DiscordandRhyme · 16/02/2022 23:22

a) Summon a picture of a specfic person/place thing? Can you change the picture?**
No
b) Can you 'hear' the voice of that person/sound in your head
Yes

C)) Can you play a piece of music in your head? Some or most of it?
Yes, easily

**
D)) Can you play a scene from a movie/TV episode etc?
No

e) ) Can you run an animated or moving scene in your head? (like a horse trotting, or a waterfall flowing I suppose
If I concentrate hard and have eyes shut, yes

F) Can you recreate or imagine smells in your head?
Yes and sometimes I'll phantom smell them in real life too
*

G) (finally!) do you have a voice running in your head lots? A sort of monologue or tangent?
Not a voice in the respect I hear it but a non accented, non speaking reader if you will. This genderless, timeless voice is reading out what I'm typing now.

So basically anything non visual I can recreate.

I am visually impaired though which may be partially why.

FatCatThinCat · 16/02/2022 23:22

What about taste then? If you can't visualise can you not taste things in your head? Like imagine a giant candy floss and smell it and taste it and feel the texture in your mouth? My mouth starts watering if I do it. And if I imagine sipping lemon juice I get that jittery body shake response.

Mumoblue · 16/02/2022 23:24

All except F.
And my internal monologue has at times been never ending. I’ve had problems with anxiety, and I’ve always likened it to like that little tape of text that runs along the bottom of the news. It’s not that extreme any more- but it used to be.

ofwarren · 16/02/2022 23:25

Yes to all and I'm autistic

ofwarren · 16/02/2022 23:26

@IWillBeSeeingYou

I’ve never understood what people mean when they say eg ‘picture a red square in your mind’ or ‘picture yourself on the beach, the sound of the waves….’

Like do people actually see it?! Or hear it…
I don’t get it, I cant imagine things like this 😐

Both
See, hear, smell and taste