A comment by a national radio show host recently caught my attention. “So, I said to myself, SELF! What would you do under these circumstances?” I couldn’t help but wonder if there were two of him inside the same body. There was no guest by the name of Self present in the studio.
We all talk to ourselves, every day, all day long, but what and where is this other self? Inner conversation is considered to be a part of consciousness that is inaudible, untraceable, invisible, and intangible. Neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor has said that consciousness may not even be part of the physical brain. It has not been found despite decades of extensive brain mapping.1 Perhaps it’s a yet-to-be discovered measurement problem. Seems unlikely, but that’s always hard to know with certainty. Science has often been loaded with false assumptions.
The New Stanford Study
This internal conversation is even more fascinating now with the new Stanford study.2 Using a brain-computer interface (BCI), with electrodes inserted in a patient’s brain and AI interpreting the EEG waves, scientists have successfully decoded inner speech with 74 percent accuracy. That is the internal speech we can only “hear” in our brain. Not with our ears. According to the authors, the participants in the study were individuals living with ALS or paralysis, people who could not rely on traditional gestures or speech. Their inner thoughts were deciphered by monitoring the speech areas of the motor cortex. Forthcoming answers from the “other self” were not captured.
So, where is this internal Self and how does it work? That is, if it works? Many years ago, I heard Deepak Chopra, in person, say that there’s a soul-like entity (meaning consciousness) located somewhere outside of each of us. At the time, I thought he was way off base; now, I sometimes wonder.
I Will Explain
With the exception of dangerous self-talk, seen in the mentally ill, our inner speech seems to be a normal bodily function. Maybe, it’s there to bounce worries and ideas off some verbal mirror? To rethink a question that bothers us? One might wonder why this useful entity, being part of human existence, isn’t discussed in medical school. Maybe that’s because most inner talk is silent. The vocal cords don’t move. You can’t hear it if you put your ear up to another person’s skull. But, unless you have electrodes in hand, I suggest that you not try this with a stranger. Note that inner talk can become outer talk to the inner self.
I suspect many animals (if not all animals) engage in some form of inner talk. Apes, crows, dolphins, magpies, elephants, and octopuses have demonstrated silent decision-making andthat, as many have suggested, is evidence of consciousness. These animals have passed the mirror test or red dot test (or something similar) which is used to prove self-awareness and self-consciousness. The test was developed in the 1970s by Gordon Gallup Jr., but it may have limited use in select animals that use smell and/or hearing for identification instead.
My dog knows his name when called. Isn’t that self-awareness? He seems to debate which toy he wants while standing in front of his toy box. Silent thought? Whenever a stranger approaches me, he has to decide whether the person is a friend or a foe, and then he acts accordingly.
To Whom Are We Really Speaking?
Over the years, I’ve asked many experts: To whom are we really speaking when we speak to ourselves? My question typically gets a guffaw and a shrug. The inner self without explanation, some say, but it might be the individual’s soul or spirit, Freud’s superego, Jiminy Cricket or Lampwick, some advisory committee in a galaxy far, far away, a mental construct or delusion, alien radio, an individual’s rule book or conscience, the lightbulb construct seen in cartoons, or a direct connection with God. Maybe it’s none of those; or maybe it’s most or all of the above, depending on the subject matter. I sometimes wonder if it’s not just a built-in sounding board, a back-up system of sorts to try out thoughts.
Could Evolution Be Responsible for Inner Conversation?
The fossil record, of course, is no help (rocks don’t speak, as far as we know). Querying an “intelligent species” like magpies, whales, elephants, apes, dolphins, or octopuses about their inner talk is impossible to date. Querying scientists is equally unfruitful (for different reasons, I suspect).
So where and when did inner conversation begin? Public education teaches us that all life began after a lightning strike to the primordial soup. Perhaps, some amino acid moving therein remarked: Boy, that really hurt! Billions of years later, maybe dinosaurs complained: The trees are too short for shade. Later on, did fish, with inexplicable lungs and feet, say something like: Ow ow ow, hot sand, hot sand! Did the earliest birds ask, Why do my eggs keep falling out of these trees? Did apes say to themselves, Wow, that’s a sexy ape! I think she’s in estrus. Too bad I can’t do a blood test. Did the Neanderthals say to themselves, Boy, has she got long hair; long enough to pull into my cave. Did early modern man say FYI, BTW, and LMAO?
And what language do different birds use? Are there dialects? Do birds silently chirp to themselves (finches different than sparrows?) and dogs silently bark (Rottweilers different than bloodhounds)? It’s hard to know. Functional MRIs can now find evidence of inner thought in dogs trained to hold still.3 Maybe internal thought will also be deciphered by AI someday.
Right Half, Left Half
And, no, talking to oneself is not the right half of the brain talking to the left half or vice versa. So far, consciousness has not been found anywhere in the brain. Two “me’s” do not show up when neurosurgeons split the left from the right side of the brain to control epilepsy. There is some bizarre behavior that usually passes, but no two me’s.1
Although one’s inner self is unfindable, it seems to me that talking to oneself has many purposes. And, having a purpose suggests intelligent design, not small incremental, successive steps over billions of years. Common sense tells us that can’t happen.
Inner conversations can definitely be helpful. As an example, just take silent reading to oneself. Plus, we don’t disturb others! We use inner talk to keep ourselves company, to push ourselves to do a greater performance or retry a bad one, to chastise or compliment oneself, to learn, to suggest corrections, to remind or memorize, to repeat instructions so that those items don’t slip away, to calculate, to sing to oneself, and to talk or pray to God.
Notes
- Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary, The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon’s Case for the Existence of the Soul(New York: Worthy, 2025).
- “Inner speech in motor cortex and implications for speech neuroprostheses.” Kunz EM et al., Cell. 2025 Aug 21;188(17):4658-4673.e17. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.06.015. Epub 2025 Aug 14. PMID: 40816265.
- Gregory Berns. How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain (Amazon Publishing, 2022).