- I really wonder if his ability only applies to music. Do any everyday sounds appeal to him, emotionally? If so, could he, maybe, map out his radius of audibility with the sounds, like he maps out the orchestra? Could he, maybe, go to a location in Chicago, a location in New York, and a location in Indianapolis, in that order, and then have someone take him to the same three locations in a random order, with his eyes blindfolded, and then determine to which area they took him, based on the sounds created? Is the image of the orchestra created the same way sonar maps areas? ... I love this short =]
- Lyssa-
Sorry, I meant verbal thought. Audible Thought. Radiolab has done another episode which talks about non-verbal thought (I think the episode is titled "Words"), which is, in essence, just experience. They say verbal thought (left-sided) is more of a logical process, whereas right-sided thought, which doesn't take the form of words, is emotional. My whole story was just about verbal thought... I'm sure deaf people think in a completely different way, which doesn't have anything to do with my story, because they cannot even comprehend sound.
- Theodora-
I've heard that episode, but not recently. I think I'll listen to it, tonight.
I'm not sure exactly WHY my thoughts sounded that way, or if they even did. It may have been my injury messing up my thought, but I have had many people tell me they've experienced the same thing, or something similar, and I have noticed, when I'm trying to find a certain word which is just on the tip of my tongue, I repeat a lot of sounds or words in my head, over and over, and they overlap, and when I find the word, it is very similar to the sounds I heard. I'm still not sure what to think about the entire thing, though. So far, it's just an interesting experience.
- I'm not sure how to put this, really, and I haven't done any extensive research on the inner workings of the human mind, but I do know what I've experienced, and though it may sound crazy, I've managed to convince myself that it is a possibility... and I tend to be skeptic of most things.
First off, I should let you know, this does not depict any thorough belief I have in how thought works, it's just an interesting story, and theory that I thought I would share.
Okay, so... I am a 17-year-old boy. As far as I can tell, I'm healthy. I've never had any major health problems... except a benign tumor removed in the fifth grade, and the contraction of Chicken Pox, Scarlet Fever, and Pneumonia all at the same time... Okay, well, I've never had any PSYCHOLOGICAL problems.
The story begins with a football game. (I'm not much of an athlete, but I did love to play.) Well, during one game, I'm running, and the ball is soaring through the air, towards my hands. I'm close to the makeshift end-zone we have created in the school parking lot. If I catch this, we win the game.
The ball starts to descend, and I'm practically an inch from the end-zone... Suddenly... I feel a snag on my right foot.
I stumble, and begin to fall. I take around 6-7 fumbling steps, and tumble over. As I'm falling, I hit my head on the concrete base of a light-post. I black out for a few minutes, but the whole time, I felt conscious. I felt time passing by, yet, I wasn't in my body. I was... somewhere else. All I saw was black, yet I felt the comfort of my home. I can't say exactly what was happening, but it felt as if I was... in a memory. I could hear the music on my computer playing, and I could hear the shower in the room next to mine.
Something was strange, though. The sounds were very distorted. They weren't fuzzy, or impossible to comprehend. They were... overlapping. I heard each sound more than 1,000 times each second (obviously an estimation. I can't count that fast.) The sound of a drop of water was elapsed thousands of times at once, and it became one single sound in my head.
When I awoke, I felt fine. The strangest part of this experience, though, was that the overlapping effect on my thoughts was still occurring. I'm not sure why. I was slightly pleased, though. I wanted to let it happen a while longer, and try to understand it.
As I thought, I noticed that I could hear my voice in my head rapidly saying each word of the thought. For example, saying the name "John" would, in text, look like this, "J(J)o[J](o)h{J}[o](h)n[h]{o}(n){h}[n]{n}"... I guess. That's honestly my most accurate depiction of this occurrence.
(Had to cut comment... 5,000 characters!)
- (Continuation of Comment)
As I thought about it, and thinking WAS very strange, I started to come up with an idea of why this was happening. (Once, again, just a theory, and I don't believe I've figured out how thought really works.)
I decided that the overlapping, rapid repetition of my thoughts was actually my normal thought process, and, for some reason, I could just hear it a different way. I'm not sure how one would go about hearing thoughts a different way, I just think I was. So, I started to think... "Maybe... we think this way all the time, and there's something in our mind that takes this chaotic overlapping, and makes it into a smooth thought." ... So... I came up with the idea that thoughts come in millions of little, overlapping bits that form together into a single, smooth thought.
Also, I started to think... "These bits... they must come from somewhere."... after thinking about it, I came up with an idea... My idea is: Our ears take in sounds, and the brain stores them. (This we know). So, not only do we store some sounds... we store ALL of them, and we access ALL of them on a daily basis. When we think, we access these sounds... but... our brain can't just hear them. Our brain doesn't have ears. BUT! WE have ears. So, faster than you could imagine, those stored sounds are routed back through your ears, and into your brain, which is like hearing those sounds again. The sounds, though, are happening so incredibly fast, that we couldn't even begin to handle what we were thinking if the sound was only routed through once. So... the brain sends segments of the thoughts thousands of times in a second, and each segment is progressing through the thought, and it eventually seems to slow enough for us to understand the thought.
The part I couldn't find an answer to was why we don't normally hear thoughts in the rapid, overlapping manner that I heard them in for that week-or-so. So... I was left with two conclusions: 1) My theory is B.S., and I was just being a little creative. or... 2) There IS something that morphs together this rapid thinking, and I just couldn't think of anything because I don't have a thorough-enough understanding of the brain, and it's workings.
So... that's my story, and I hope you enjoyed it. I know many of you probably have many criticisms, and I'm okay with that. I just felt this urge to share this story, and I'm ready for any criticism I may receive.
