Brain hemisphere laterality
Studies of laterality (which brain hemisphere is being used) have been inconclusive concerning which hemisphere dreaming occurs in (Goldstein, Stoltzfus & Gardock, 1972; Shafton, 1995, note on p. 29). The results of recent research, in fact, seem to indicate that the functions commonly ascribed to right and left brain hemispheres are also not as clear-cut as formerly thought (Brown & Kosslyn, 1993). A different aspect of laterality has to do with compensation: both Cartwright and Mattoon have found that persons who were predominantly creative in waking life tended to have dreams which were "short, direct and easily understood", while someone more verbal and logical would tend to have dreams "in complicated symbolic images" (Cartwright, 1977; Mattoon, 1984).
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