A person who was born profoundly deaf revealed what they hear inside their head while thinking or dreaming.

In a Reddit forum, thousands of hearing-impaired individuals commented trying to explain what they hear inside their head.

The experiences differed drastically, usually dependent on whether or not the person was born deaf. Some claim they can even think in sign language.

But one person who was born profoundly deaf joined the discussion to reveal what they hear inside their mind, having only been able to hear for a few years after being born without the use of their ears.

“Before I got surgery for my cochlear implant/before learning ASL, I don’t exactly recall knowing about any ‘mental functionalities’ like using a thinking voice. Most of my mental uses were re-imagining images in visual thoughts (if I wanted a hotdog, I’d visualise a hotdog),” they said.

“Besides that, my dreams were like silent films (and 95% still often are silent even after my surgery to help me hear). After that and being able to hear for some years, at some point, I developed an ‘inner voice’ which just… doesn’t have any clear vocal sound to it?” they said.

“Yet, at the same time, kind… of… does? Kinda weird/hard to explain,” they added.

“It’s a jump between ‘muffled ‘speaking’ sound as I think’ and ‘hollow echoes’ for my normal thinking voice, and when I read fiction with characters, for those who have pre-set voiced I re-imagine them in my head as to how they would act it out and it would ‘sound’ just like the tone I’d hear from the media they’re from. For the stories that aren’t adapted into any audio format, I make them up in my head and try to make them sound distinct if I felt like it, haha.”

“My friends (non-CI) have told me they either don’t mentally see/’hear’ anything at all and have no idea [of] the concept I’m trying to explain or they visualise floating hands signing to them in their mind space. I don’t think in the latter at all, except when there are signs I’m trying to remember/reference.”

What may be the most interesting, is that the user also revealed they can sometimes dream with subtitles.

“I sometimes dream them with semi-transparent CC/subtitles hovering what I’m seeing (sometimes at the bottom or near people’s heads like in some video games just without the speech bubbles),” they said.

“Or none at all, but my dreaming brain ‘narrates’ my dreams to me, telling me info somehow? Idk if that’s a deaf thing though. But I’ve always found how I dream kind of fascinating.”

“The very rare sounds I ‘hear’ in my dreams is kind of hard to explain as well, I can’t tell if they were close to authentic [to a deaf person with hearing] that my brain produced for my dream or just my brain trying to ‘reimagine’ the sound in my mental voice while I dream? But it felt like there was legit real sound to it, but on the disorienting/surreal side.”