Anauralia and anendophasia are two types of neurodiversity many people have never heard of and University of Auckland researcher Zoé Schelp wants to help change that.
Anauralia is the lack of a “mind’s ear”. If someone experiencing anauralia is asked to imagine hearing a sound, such as a dog barking or the chorus of a well-known song, they can locate the concept, but can’t hear anything in their mind. Anauralia affects about one percent of the population.
Anendophasia is the absence of an “inner voice”, meaning people can’t hear their own voice in their head.
The two types of neurodivergence often occur together, but some people have one or the other, says Schelp. Over the past three years researching for her PhD in the Faculty of Psychology and the Centre for Brain Research, she has examined whether having a “silent mind” impacts on people’s lives.
Inner Voice
Her research focused on schizotypy – the spectrum of experiences ranging from complete absence of odd beliefs, social anxiety, paranoia, and magical thinking, to frequent, palpable sensations that things happened when they didn’t.
When schizotypy reaches abnormal extremes, it can be diagnosed as schizophrenia, which typically involves hearing voices and experiencing hallucinations, delusions, lack of motivation, and low mood. People who strongly experienced an inner voice were less likely to have hallucinatory experiences, but were no more or less likely to be socially withdrawn and suffer or low mood. Those who vividly heard imagined sounds in their mind had higher scores for hallucinatory perceptions.
This suggests that people with an abnormal belief that they ‘hear voices’ don’t necessarily have a loud inner voice. Instead, people seem to ‘hear voices’ when they vividly imagine sounds and wrongly perceive them as voices coming from the outside world.
Silent Minds
People with silent minds are able to remember things and function just as well as those with noisier minds, Schelp says. “Most people don’t know they have anauralia or anendophasia, because they’ve lived with it their whole life.”
Raising awareness of anauralia and anendophasia is important, because therapies that involve changing your inner narrative or imagining sounds might be less effective for people with these neurodivergences, she says.
“It’s important that mental health professionals are aware of the differences in people’s experiences, so they can help them appropriately.“ If people can’t experience – let alone change – their inner narrative, they might be able to whisper affirming messages to themselves aloud instead, for example.”
She says schizophrenia might look different in people with anauralia, given they are less likely to experience auditory hallucinations and are more likely to suffer from low mood. “That could have implications for people getting diagnosed or not getting diagnosed.”
Up until now, little research has been done on the silent mind. The term anauralia was coined in 2021 by Schelp’s PhD supervisor, psychology professor Anthony Lambert, and a former student Rish Hinwar. After receiving a Marsden Fund grant, Lambert developed the Auckland Auditory Imagery Scale to measure people’s experiences of mind’s ear and inner voice.
Schelp used this tool in her study. Although Schelp doesn’t experience anauralia or anendophasia herself, as a violinist and music lover she was instantly fascinated by the idea some people couldn’t hear sounds or music in their minds. She has since discovered people with silent minds can become musicians, but whether they can successfully compose music has not been examined yet.
Originally from Germany, Schelp completed her schooling early, before moving to New Zealand with her family to start university at the age of 15. She gained a Marsden Fund scholarship to carry out her PhD and graduated on 22 September at the age of 25. If funding can be found, she will explore further in the field of schizophrenia, hallucinations and auditory imagery.
