The puzzle of the silent mind

Have you ever had a catchy tune you just can't get out of your head? Most of us can imagine sounds - music, voices, environmental noise - to varying degrees. But about 1% of people can't imagine sounds at all. This lack of auditory imagery is called anauralia. Claire Concannon meets a team of researchers investigating this newly described phenomenon, and speaks to a musician who experiences anauralia.

If I asked you to play your favourite song in your head, how clear would it be? Would you hear all the different instruments - the tone of them, the timbre? Or would it be just a basic melody, as if played from a distance?

Or is this something you just cannot do at all?

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Most people, over 99% of us, can imagine sounds in our head - environmental sounds, music and our own voices. Some of us imagine better than others. But there is a small proportion of people, estimated at just less than 1%, who can't imagine sounds.

This lack of 'auditory imagery' has recently been given a name by psychologist Professor Tony Lambert, based at the University of Auckland, and his colleague. They call it anauralia.

Tony first became intrigued by the idea after reading about people who lack visual imagery. This phenomenon was called aphantasia by Professor Adam Zeman in 2015, whose work was widely reported.

But from Tony's point of view, while aphantasia was getting its day in the sun, a lack of auditory imagery had gone largely unstudied. So, he decided to change that.

The key questions that Tony and his team now want to answer centre around how anauraliacs (people who experience anauralia) process and store information in the present, create and recall memories, and imagine the future. Previous research has linked these particular functions of the brain to auditory imagery, so what strategies do people lacking imagined sound use instead?

PhD candidates Zoé Schelp and Gage Quigley-Tump have used results from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Survey to start investigating. The survey included questions asking about auditory and visual imagery. Zoé recruited some of those who reported experiencing anauralia to her study of working memory. She uses a simple memory test to challenge both anauraliacs and control participants, and then interviews them about the different strategies they employ. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details