After reading a post about someone who got hearing aids and could hear for the first time, it made me wonder about if I had ever lost my hearing would i remember what stuff sounds like.
While I’m sitting here i can think of a sound i know, like chickens clucking, and can “hear it” in my head. Same with tap water going, etc.
How is it that I can “hear” these sounds very clearly in my mind by imagining them if I’m not actually hearing the sound physically?
In: 6
The same way you can imagine the color red without actual light hitting your eyes. It’s just your imagination.
The more scientific answer is:
You might know that your brain is divided into areas which are responsible for some special thing. Therefore the front of your brain, or the prefrontal cortex, is responsible for your sense of awareness, thoughts, mental processes etc; the back of your brain, your occipital cortex, is responsible for your sight, the top part of your brain (precentral/postcentral gyrus) is responsible for your movement/sense of touch respectively etc.
In neuroscience, we call these Brodmann’s areas after a german anatomist Korbinian Brodman, who, during his time, created the most detailed map of our brain and explained many of these areas (there are 52 brodmann areas)
Essentially, each “part” of the brain that has a “different” purpose, is its own brodmann area. For example, what I described as “the back of your brain, your occipital cortex” is a larger area that is divided into other brodmann’s areas. The most notable ones are 17, 18, and 19. 17 is the primary visual cortex which “converts” an electrical impulse of a neuron into a mental picture. This is the part that makes you see. However, areas 18 and 19, are what we call Visual Association Areas which help us determine what exactly are we seing – is it a cat, or a tree? Is it blue, orange, tall, short, fuzzy, clear.
The same principle goes for our hearing. We have a prymary auditory cortex (brodmann area 41) and associative ones (B.A. 42, B.A. 22). Same as in sight, the primary cortex convers an electrical neural impulse into mental image of a sound, while the association cortices play an important role in classification of the sound.
Now, what does that have to do with imagining a sound? Well, our brain doesn’t just communicate with other organs; it can communicate with itself. It does that by having neurons which connect to other neurons in the brain, but in the different location. The best example of this, and the one televant for your question is the infamous prefrontal cortex. As you may have noticed, the prefrontal cortex deals with complex mental tasks such as awareness, reasoning, thinking, planning, but also imagining. The prefrontal cortex is therefore heavily connected with other parts of the brain that van help it process a thought, connect a specific though with an emotion etc – the prefrontal cortex is what many believe makes you *you*.
These connections with other parts of the brain can make the prefrontal cortex a powerful inductor that can make you hear a sound that isn’t actually there i.e. imagine it. Although further research needs to be done, it is believed that it can activate the auditory cortex, especially the associative areas which can make you imagine a sound, sight, feeling, pain etc.
So, to conclude, your imagination, which is heavily harbored by the prefrontal cortex, “tricks” your brain into processing a sound that didn’t come from the ears, but rather from the brain itself. That’s why you can imagine sounds.
If you have follow-up questions, feel free to ask
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