Frank Wilson was an early contributor to the development of
performing arts medicine in the United States and Europe in the
1980's. In 1986 he was a co-founder and neurologist for the Health
Program for Performing Artists at the University of California, San
Francisco, where his interest focused on impaired hand control in
musicians. In 1989 he moved to the University of D sseldorf in
Germany, where he held a one-year fellowship as visiting professor
of neurology and was the organizer of a research team studying
focal hand dystonia in musicians.
Following his return to California in 1990, Dr. Wilson continued
his work with performing artists; he began a trial of
music-learning experiences for patients in the neurological
rehabilitation program at Mt. Zion Hospital; and for two years he
was the neurologist on a multidisciplinary team investigating upper
extremity injuries among textile designers at the Levi Strauss
Company in San Francisco. He became the medical director of the
Health Program for Performing Artists in 1996, and in 2001 accepted
an appointment as Clinical Professor of Neurology at Stanford
University School of Medicine, joining a clinical research team at
Stanford studying deep brain stimulation for patients with complex
movement disorders.
Wilson's career-long interest in the neurology of human hand
control is reflected in two books that explore the neurological and
anthropological underpinnings of skilled hand use. The first, Tone
Deaf and All Thumbs? was published by Viking-Penguin in 1986. The
second, The Hand- How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human
Culture, was published by Pantheon Books in 1998 and was nominated
that year for a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction.
Since the publication of The Hand, he has presented his work and
his ideas at national meetings of many professional organizations,
and to a wide community of artists and educators who share the
opinion that the human hand and brain are an anatomically and
behaviorally integrated system - biology's not-so-secret formula
for individual human intelligence, creativity, and autonomy.
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