快猫短视频

WITH hindsight, it is clear this has been puzzling me for years. It started with the realisation that I don鈥檛 always see things the way others do. Then I began to wonder what was going on inside other people鈥檚 minds. I don鈥檛 mean what they are thinking, but how they are thinking. What form does their stream of consciousness take 鈥� and could it be entirely different from mine?

Thinking about thinking is hard. Sure, you may have heard of inner voice and inner vision: there was that buzz about people who don鈥檛 have any internal monologue, and huge interest in aphantasia, the phenomenon where people have no mind鈥檚 eye. But there is more to inner experience than that. What about sensations and emotions and abstract ideas? How do these all mesh together to create thoughts? Why do certain things pop into our minds? And what makes someone prone to ruminations or anxiety?

To find out more, I turned to scientists who study the mind. I discovered that we are finally getting to grips with the different ways people think 鈥� allowing us to identify whether we think the same way as other people鈥� or not.

Philosophers have mulled over the nature of thought since at least the time of Aristotle. A century ago, it was also a popular subject for psychologists. 鈥淏ut it got kicked out the door by behaviourists,鈥� says psychologist at Durham University, UK. 鈥淭hey claimed that it鈥檚 impossible to be scientific about the subjective nature of experience.鈥� So, with the rise of neuroscience, psychology focused its efforts on objective, measurable phenomena. Thought became sidelined. But it wasn鈥檛 forgotten entirely.

Enter . In 1973, he invented a method that would give us a better handle on introspective experiences: a beeper that attaches to the ear and goes off at random intervals each day. At the beep, volunteers record their current inner experience. Later, in one-to-one sessions with researchers, they drill down into the exact nature of these thoughts. Over the decades, Hurlburt, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has used this method, called , with thousands of people. 鈥淎fter four or five days, you have a pretty good sense of someone鈥檚 inner experience,鈥� he says.

The five types of thinking

That鈥檚 not to say it is easy. The first surprise was that people really struggle to introspect, so much so that beeper studies tend to ignore the first day鈥檚 data as it is too unreliable. Even defining a 鈥渢hought鈥� is tricky. We assume we are all talking about the same thing 鈥� a conscious mental state 鈥� but, in fact, everyone has their own ideas, says Hurlburt. What his method reveals is that our thoughts seem to include five common phenomena: inner speech, inner seeing, feelings or emotions, sensory awareness (such as the sensation of your shoe rubbing) and unsymbolised thinking (explicit thoughts that don鈥檛 include the experience of words, images or symbols).

The second surprise was that we are poor judges of what is going on inside our own heads. Beeper studies are time-consuming, so self-report questionnaires asking people how they think are more common. Comparing these two approaches reveals shocking discrepancies. Research suggests that we , with the results of self-report questionnaires being between two and four times higher than those of descriptive experience sampling. So, while I conceive of myself as almost always thinking with pictures, it is likely that only around a quarter of my inner experiences contain them.

What has become clear is that we all think using our own combination of phenomena. Each of the five main ones turns up in about 25 per cent of beeps. 鈥淢any people have multiple things going on [in their mind] at the same time and those multiple things can be unbelievably complex,鈥� says Hurlburt. A single thought might contain five or more separate simultaneous images along with inner speech about something else entirely.

Intriguingly, descriptive experience sampling also undermines a long-held idea about different states of consciousness: that we switch between mind wandering and task-focused thinking. Mind wandering is related to activity in the brain鈥檚 鈥渄efault mode network鈥�. The DMN is deactivated in focused thinking. However, Fernyhough and his team found that around , suggesting that both states could be active at different levels at any one time. 鈥淧eople鈥檚 experiences seem to unfold on multiple, parallel, simultaneous tracks,鈥� he says.

Even something as straightforward as isn鈥檛 just one thing. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a kind of language, and language is incredibly versatile,鈥� says Fernyhough. It can take the form of a monologue, dialogue or debate, it can be articulate or slangy, nagging or rallying, emotional or dispassionate. Although you are likely to have a combination of any or all of these, one or two may dominate. My own inner voice is largely didactic and encouraging, but others have told me that theirs is so negative they try to drown it out with podcasts.

The same is true for inner seeing. It varies in amount and clarity, with and an unknown proportion experiencing super-vivid imagery. There also seem to be different forms of inner vision. In her book, , at Colorado State University distinguishes between object visualisers and spatial visualisers. 鈥淎n object visualiser, like me, thinks in photorealistic pictures,鈥� says Grandin. Spatial visualisers think in patterns. The former make good engineers and builders, the latter scientists and strategists, she says. 鈥淎 lot of people are mixtures.鈥�

Visual or verbal?

This mixing holds for all forms of thinking. Take the intuition that people tend to be either visual or verbal thinkers. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a kind of myth that there鈥檚 a trade-off,鈥� says at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 鈥淲e consistently find positive correlations.鈥� In other words, , and those with quiet inner seeing also have a quiet inner voice. What鈥檚 more, our minds meld different forms of thought in all sorts of ways that resemble synaesthesia, in which the senses become mixed, says at the University of Glasgow, UK: 鈥淟ots of people have [internal] number lines, or a visualisation for where numbers might be, and these can be quite complex and unusual.鈥�

People are often unaware of their idiosyncrasies. Lupyan describes a chat with two scientists during which it emerged that one visualises only still images while the other has imagery that only moves in one direction. More common is the practice of visualising spoken words as text. About 10 per cent of people do this, research by Lupyan and his team reveals. Their enables you to see how your imagery compares with other鈥檚. It is enlightening 鈥� even if the results come with the caveat that we all tend to overestimate our inner experiences.

鈥淯ntil very recently, both philosophers and scientists have assumed that everybody thinks just like them,鈥� says Macpherson. 鈥淲e now know there鈥檚 a lot that is very different.鈥� This is especially true of our sensory experiences of the world 鈥� our perceptions 鈥� although, again, we may be unaware of our peculiarities. at the University of Sussex, UK, goes so far as to describe perception as a 鈥渃ontrolled hallucination鈥� rather than a reflection of reality. 鈥淭he brain is continuously making its best guess of what鈥檚 out there,鈥� he says. It works like a prediction machine, using all the information available to create our inner experience. 鈥淭he part that constitutes our conscious perception is the prediction 鈥� it鈥檚 not the readout of the sensory signals,鈥� he says.

Why do thoughts appear?

In an attempt to map the hidden landscape of perceptual diversity, last year Macpherson, Seth and others launched the . It consists of a huge range of online interactive tests and illusions spanning perceptions of colour, music, shapes, time and much more. (Give it a try 鈥� I discovered that my brain invents whooshing noises to accompany the rhythmic movement of simple shapes.) There are no results as yet, but with thousands of participants already, there has never been such an ambitious attempt to shed light on our inner experience. 鈥淚鈥檓 hoping this will reveal what correlates with what 鈥� whether we have perceptual personalities,鈥� says Seth. What we already know for sure is that there is a massive amount of diversity in perception. 鈥淵ou and I might describe ourselves as neurotypical, so we assume it鈥檚 the same. It鈥檚 not the same,鈥� he says.

The form of our thoughts is one thing, but then there is also the question of content. Your subconscious mind is a hive of activity dealing with everything from controlling breathing and movements to receiving constant input from your body and your senses. What reaches your consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. 快猫短视频s have pinpointed how this happens: information that was previously unconscious becomes available to our conscious mind when there is a burst of synchronised activity distributed across many areas of the cortex 鈥� called the global workspace theory. But why we have the thoughts we do is a stickier problem.

Obviously, some of our thinking is focused on the tasks at hand. But many thoughts just seem to emerge unbidden from the subconscious, and that is much harder to explain. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 even know how memories look in our mind,鈥� says at the University of Coventry, UK. The brain seems to store them not as discrete entities but distributed around a network. 鈥淲e think what happens is that, for some reason, some connection is made between previously disparate ideas,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat can then trigger a cascade of links.鈥� This process may have been cued by a smell, taste or thought. Nevertheless, certain memories seem more likely to pop into consciousness than others. They include ones that are recent, emotional, frequently repeated and key to your identity.

Intrusive thoughts

This has all sorts of implications for your individual inner experience, including how often you have aha! moments, creative ideas and unwanted intrusive thoughts, which, by the way, are far more common than you might imagine. For instance, one study found that . But it doesn鈥檛 explain why certain thoughts 鈥� often dark ones 鈥� get stuck in our minds.

at the University of Michigan calls this and notes that it usually entails thinking about oneself 鈥� your experiences, emotions, desires and needs. 鈥淲e become flooded with emotion and we lose sight of the bigger picture where solutions to our problems often lie,鈥� he says. Everyone gets this from time to time, but some people are more susceptible. 鈥淲omen are more vulnerable to chatter than men,鈥� says Kross. So are people with certain personality traits. 鈥淣euroticism has been linked with chatter 鈥� it鈥檚 almost built into the definition,鈥� he says.

There is an intriguing idea about why people differ so much when it comes to negative rumination and the anxiety that often accompanies it. The key could be interoception 鈥� our processing of signals coming from our own bodies, such as heart rate, breathing and hunger. 鈥淭here are two competing ideas with regards to anxiety and interoception,鈥� says at Royal Holloway, University of London. Either people with anxiety pay more attention to these minor bodily fluctuations or anxiety results from . Last year, in an analysis combining many studies, Murphy and her colleagues . 鈥淚t鈥檚 the amount of time you鈥檙e spending evaluating signals that is linked to increased anxiety,鈥� she says. But there is a second factor. 鈥淚t is well established that ,鈥� she says. In other words, catastrophising plus excess interoceptive attention might explain why anxious ruminations seem to dominate some people鈥檚 inner experience.

It is hard to say what counts as excess, though, because interoception provides essential warning signals that something is wrong with the body. 鈥淢aybe it鈥檚 more how flexibly you can attend to signals when you need to, but also ignore them when it鈥檚 not ideal for you to do so,鈥� says Murphy. Meditation may help us learn to do this. Other evidence-based ways to assist in reducing chatter fall into three main categories: distancing methods, such as coaching yourself using your name, and keeping a journal; seeking support from someone who can help you put your worries in perspective; and environmental interventions, such as exposure to green spaces and experiencing awe.

I鈥檓 grateful my mind isn鈥檛 prone to chatter or catastrophising, but reflecting on the way other people鈥檚 may be has been eye opening. We all have our own ways of thinking, central to who we are 鈥� and yet we seldom stop to consider how they shape our approach to the world and each other. While the research into its impact is still in its infancy, it hints that how each of us thinks may influence our behaviour. It has already been shown to affect how well we learn. For instance, children with better ability to manipulate mental images of shapes in their mind in preschool were . Similarly, tennis players who combine self-talk with mental imagery perform better on court. The way you think can even make you or conspiracy theories.

Thinking about thinking will also explain why you don鈥檛 always see things the way others do 鈥� both literally and metaphorically. 鈥淥ther people are different to us: sometimes better or worse, but mostly just different,鈥� says Macpherson. 鈥淚f only we could keep that in mind, I think we could be kinder and more understanding of each other.鈥�