Why do some people have loud, intrusive voices running in their head seemingly all the time, and others a totally ‘silent mind’? 

In a new BBC Radio 4 documentary, The Silent Mind, Professor Charles Fernyhough from our Department of Psychology finds out what it’s like to have no inner speech, and asks: why are we often totally wrong about what’s going on inside our own heads?

The programme was based in part on research that has been done here at Durham, particularly the collaboration with Professor Russell Hurlburt of University of Nevada, Las Vegas, whom Professor Fernyhough interviewed in the programme. It was

Professor Hurlburt’s work that sparked the worldwide interest in the fact that some people do not have inner speech.

The Silent Mind received some fantastic feedback like this one on Twitter and has since been selected by Radio 4 for their Seriously…podcast, which means it is now accessible through all the usual podcast channels.

If you would like to find out more about inner speech, have a look at Professor Fernyhough’s book The Voices Within.