Let's say that I wanted to build or design a brain that could talk to itself. That is, it could experience the "inner monologue", that practice we frequently do where we hear our own speech inside our minds without actually engaging in the physical act of speech.
Let's further say that this brain already had discrete areas for both the production of language-based speech, and for the interpretation of language-based speech as heard from others.
Couldn't I design such a brain such that the areas for speech generation and speech interpretation could be voluntarily connected? Wouldn't that generate the sensation of hearing your own voice in your mind, even though you weren't actually speaking?