I have ADHD too but in my case I don't actually "hear" any of the thoughts. But they exist similar to how you describe. At any given time I can feel multiple different thoughts kind of floating around. When music gets stuck in my head I don't so much hear it in there as I feel the presence of a song. So I have to talk out loud in order to keep from losing the thread of what I was thinking about.

My mental radio is rarely off, but I don't have an internal monologue.

Me too!! I had my nephew and his wife arguing at dinner about whether the inner voice was real or god. 🤣

i dont have one at all, i think, i don't even have one when typing, which i think leads to a lot of weird mistakes, sometimes i'll just interject a completely random word, or pickup halfway through a sentence with a completely different sentence, it's weird sometimes.

That's really fascinating and similar to how I think, I think. Like, typing, reading, or thinking about things that are by nature verbal get internally verbalized but in an atonal "narrator voice", though it's still not "quiet" otherwise. I also have what I call my "internal walkman" for playing music in a recording/playback manner (sometimes with some "skips"), rather than any voice of my own.

You're able to turn yours off??

For me, my inner voice is muted when I am focused on something, like working on a task or playing a video game.

The second I stop focusing, the inner voice starts.

If I do nothing, it's usually a song that is stuck in my head.

As for other senses, for me, it is the same as focusing on a task. When my senses are activated, the inner voice stops.

If I am reading something and I know thr voice of the person that wrote that, I automatically read in their voice and it is extremely hard to read in my voice.

Mine is constantly whatever song my brain has decided is that days hit. Most of the time im able to tune it out but that doesn't mean that 100% that songs playing over and over audibly in my head, it just varies how loud it is at that moment

It doesn’t shut off, I think visually and through the experiences of the senses in part too but the words always accompany the images/senses

It’s an interesting exercise in trying to understand the experience of others while removing our own biases. Doesn’t always go so well I guess! So how do you think?? I really can’t tell from your comment

I think that's pretty normal to some extent, I remember reading that you can kinda see people's inner monologue on a head MRI based on tiny movements of speech organs. Take this with a massive grain of salt, no idea where I read that and too lazy to find it right now lol.

Personally I definitely notice every now and then that when I activate my inner voice I also slightly move my tongue etc. as if I was saying what it says.

Yes…but it has my voice singing on top of the song’s original singer

This is a really interesting question. If I were a researcher, I'd try to go chase this topic, since it seems to be fairly quantifiable.

Like Mudskipper, I can replay music in my head but it has a few caveats: I don't really process the instruments.... I remember the pitch/volume/etc but primarily of vocals. I also replay with the original singer's voice and not my own. Replaying a few songs in my head now and I can't even focus on the instruments if there were vocals unless they are critical to how the song works, like a bass drop. If I try to replay music that is instrumental, I get verbal recreations, like someone performing the song acapella. If i focus hard, I can hear instruments instead, but that requires thinking about it. This matches how I 'sing along' with instrumental pieces in otherwise verbal songs. It might just be that the backing music isn't retained, so I can remember the melody, but not, say, a bass line unless the bass is being highlighted.

Are there people who CAN'T replay music in their heads? Are they immune to 'ear-worms' or do they just perceive it differently?