LANGUAGE IN DREAMING AND REGIONAL EEG ALPHA-POWER

In an intensive single-subject design, electroencephalographic (EEG) a lpha power and receptive and expressive language in dreaming were stud ied in 12 dreams during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep on 12 separate nights. Bilateral EEG was recorded continuously from 21 sites and digi tized. We used the Fast Fourier transformation (FFT) for power spectra l analysis to measure EEG power in the alpha frequency range (8-12 Hz) at each of the EEG sites. The subject was awakened after about 14 min utes into the second REM period, and dream reports were collected. We scored the dream reports for expressive and receptive language. The lo wer the alpha power on the left sides of those homologous pairs that r oughly correspond to Broca's (C3) or Wernicke's area (P3), the more ex pressive or receptive language in dream reports. The largest differenc e between the correlation of the left and that of the right homologous pair of regions was found in the central (C3, C4) area for expressive language and in the parietal (P3, P4) area for receptive language. Ou r finding suggests lateralized and localized cortical activation in re lation to language in dreaming.