Voices in the head: diversity of endophasia framed in a neurocognitive model

Hélène LOEVENBRUCK : Directrice de Recherche à l’Université Grenoble Alpes

“I am not a man, I am Cantona.”

“I love football.”

As you silently read these quotes, can you hear Eric Cantona’s voice? Can you imagine his next sentence?

Inner speech, or endophasia, can take various formats depending on the individual or the situation. It can feel expanded, like a little voice in the head, or rather condensed. It can occur as a monologue or a dialogue. It can seem intentional or irruptive. Recent data on atypical covert verbal forms, such as auditory verbal aphantasia (reported lack of inner voice), verbal hyperphantasia (reported vivid inner voice), and auditory verbal hallucination, challenge theories that postulate a universal quality of endophasia. In ConDialInt, a neurocognitive model rooted in a predictive control theory, such forms can be accounted for by considering a gradual variation along three essential dimensions: condensation, dialogality and intentionality. The inner voice phenomenon is seen as an exaptation of the sensory predictions involved in the control of overt speech. Speech production is considered to be hierarchically controlled, from conceptualisation to articulation, via formulation, motor planning and programming. At each level, control is based on the comparison between initial input and prediction. Endophasia is viewed as an interruption in the speech production process. Condensed forms emerge when the interruption occurs early, before the formulation stage. Expanded forms, inner voices, recruit the full production process, interrupted only prior to articulation. Dialogal forms are taken to include indexical and perspective properties. Intentional forms are seen as rigorously monitored predictions, whereas unintentional forms are loosely monitored. Agency feeling is assumed to rely on the timing of initial and predicted signals. The ConDialInt model is compatible with neuroanatomical data obtained for a variety of inner speech situations. It also accounts for atypical endophasia. Verbal hyperphantasia vs aphantasia are explained by variation in the condensation dimension. Auditory verbal hallucinations are construed as unintentional dialogal endophasia bestowed with a lack of agency. These propositions have implications for levels of representation in theories of language processing and cognition in general.

Here the zoom link : https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/87516300272?pwd=Vm5xdk9yTU9icHpNU2Z2eXVsUGdmQT09 

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