For me it can be "auditory" in the same way that I can "see" pictures of things I'm thinking of inside my head. My understanding is when you're visualizing something in your head -- say, your partner's face -- the visual cortex is activated as if you are actually seeing it. The same goes for my thoughts.
Not every thought is actually.... auralized? auditorialized? ...though. There's some sort of default mode that I operate in most of the day. I don't have to "hear" every single thought I have, I'm able to take in information and perform common actions without hearing thoughts. But, as soon as I go into "conscious" mode, nearly everything becomes sounded out internally. For instance, when programming, I'm constantly having a real internal conversation along the lines of, "Okay, so if this value is Y here, but then this transformation happens, then..." And yes, this occurs in my voice, or at least how my voice sounds to me when I speak. (Sometimes, when I'm really in the flow of it, I'll even start unintentionally voicing it out loud.) I actually like this, because it forces my thoughts to slow down -- when I'm really thinking through a hard problem, I have no choice but to think at the speed of my monologue. It's like built-in rubber-duck debugging.
Having said all of this, we know that thoughts can be expressed differently in different people because deaf individuals (who were born deaf) certainly do not have an ongoing auditory inner monologue.
I mean, at the end of the day, a thought is just a pattern of firing neurons, so what precise neurons are involved is going to impact how you experience that thought.
Not every thought is actually.... auralized? auditorialized? ...though. There's some sort of default mode that I operate in most of the day. I don't have to "hear" every single thought I have, I'm able to take in information and perform common actions without hearing thoughts. But, as soon as I go into "conscious" mode, nearly everything becomes sounded out internally. For instance, when programming, I'm constantly having a real internal conversation along the lines of, "Okay, so if this value is Y here, but then this transformation happens, then..." And yes, this occurs in my voice, or at least how my voice sounds to me when I speak. (Sometimes, when I'm really in the flow of it, I'll even start unintentionally voicing it out loud.) I actually like this, because it forces my thoughts to slow down -- when I'm really thinking through a hard problem, I have no choice but to think at the speed of my monologue. It's like built-in rubber-duck debugging.
Having said all of this, we know that thoughts can be expressed differently in different people because deaf individuals (who were born deaf) certainly do not have an ongoing auditory inner monologue.
I mean, at the end of the day, a thought is just a pattern of firing neurons, so what precise neurons are involved is going to impact how you experience that thought.