Music and the Debate on Cerebral Dominance: The Classic Work of Bever and Chiarello

Abstract

Dominance of the left hemisphere for such analytic functions would explain dominance of the right ear for melody recognition in experienced listeners: as their capacity for musical analysis increases, the left hemisphere becomes increasingly involved in the processing of music. This raises the possibility that being musically sophisticated has real neurologic concomitants, permitting the utilization of a different strategy of musical apprehension that calls on left hemisphere functions.”