The musical dream revisited: Music and language in dreams.

Abstract

After a historical survey of work on the musical dream during the last thirty years, some theoretical issues concerning the relation of music and language are raised. It is observed that music, unlike language and imagery, does not undergo distortion in dream, and that in the word-music combination, music overrides words. It is also suggested that song may be primarily a right-hemisphere function, in which music adopts but subordinates language, which has limited representation in the RH. The integrity of music, as compared to language, in dream may also be related to RH dominance during sleep. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)