Meet the Neuroscientist Who Discovered That Some People Have No Inner Speech

About the conversation

🧠 THANK YOU FOR BEING A PART OF THE GIANT'S SHOULDER FAMILY Here is the full, ad free version of my conversation with Johanne Nedergaard. Johanne Nedergaard is the cognitive scientist who, with Gary Lupyan, named anendophasia: the absence of an inner voice. An assistant professor at Aarhus University and a 2024 Aarhus University PhD prize winner, she ran the first experiments testing what changes when the voice in your head goes quiet. The answer was far less than anyone expected. Expect to learn: - The Missing Voice: why some people report no inner speech at all, and why nobody noticed - The Rhyme Test: they struggled with word lists and rhymes, until they said the words out loud - Mind Over Muscle: jam someone's inner voice and they push less hard on the bike - Heart Talk: raising your heart rate while lying perfectly still, using only words - The Control Question: why mental health tracks whether you can switch your inner voice off, not whether it's kind GS EPISODES MENTIONED Russell Hurlburt - No. 1 Inner Experience Expert: Inner Monologue, Aphantasia and How Your Mind Lies to You: https://youtu.be/j0gKl-g3DNg Adam Zeman - The Blind Mind's Eye: How Aphantasia Is Rewriting Consciousness ! Dr Adam Zeman: https://youtu.be/SgA2up6-Bok Alex Hutchinson - The Lie That Unlocked Human Limits, Tricking Perception & Aphantasia!: https://youtu.be/YqqU4ckq8s8 GUEST LINKS Aarhus University Profile: https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/au651723@cc.au.dk Personal Site: https://johannenedergaard.github.io Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/johanneskned.bsky.social Nedergaard & Lupyan (2024), Not Everybody Has an Inner Voice: https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976241243004 Nedergaard et al. (2023), Mind Over Body: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2023.102472 Wallentin et al. (2025), Heart Talk: https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.70138 LISTEN ON Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249 SKOOL Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/about FOLLOW EVAN https://x.com/evan_mcgl TIMESTAMPS 0:00:00 Trailer 0:02:02 What Is Anendophasia? 0:04:19 The Viral Threads That Started It All 0:05:57 Four Experiments on People With No Inner Voice 0:07:12 Saying the Words Out Loud Closed the Gap 0:12:03 Can You Trust Your Own Introspection? 0:15:20 Detecting Inner Speech From the Outside 0:17:49 How Many People Have No Inner Voice? 0:18:47 Where Your Inner Voice Comes From 0:21:17 Is It Genetic? 0:23:59 Unconscious Inner Speech and the Aphantasia Parallel 0:28:51 Deaf People Sign to Themselves Silently 0:31:18 What Your Self-Talk Reveals About Your Sport 0:33:39 Jam Your Inner Voice and You Push Less Hard 0:41:38 Raising Your Heart Rate With Words Alone 0:45:05 Positive vs Negative Self-Talk in Sport 0:50:48 What Silent Minds Reveal About Thinking 0:54:06 Mental Health Is About Control, Not Content 1:00:16 Psychedelics and the Inner Voice 1:01:44 Can You Train an Inner Voice? 1:05:18 They Never Rehearse Conversations .....Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com