Inner speech brain mapping: Is it possible to map what we cannot observe?

Item does not contain fulltext
Inner speech (IS), or the ability to speak silently in our heads, is an important function in our rich mental life that lies at the crossroad of other cognitive domains such as language, thinking, and working memory as well as self-reflective and self-regulatory functions. An outstanding question is how to measure IS, as this phenomenon is not easily observable, and posits an important challenge to research and clinical work especially during awake brain intraoperative monitoring. Here we review theoretical and methodological approaches to IS, highlight its neural underpinnings, and propose several ideas to address the challenge of measuring IS during awake brain surgery.