Research
Introduction
The body of research into musicians’ focal dystonia has grown significantly in recent years, in part due to the complex, and as of yet incomplete etiology of the condition. There has also been a significant increase in interest from researchers across a variety of subject fields, as the multi-faceted nature of focal dystonia continues to reveal itself.
The neuroscience of dystonia until fairly recently has assumed the condition to be a result of basal ganglia disease. Focal dystonias and their often “task-specific” symptoms, appear to contradict this theory, and instead, it is now considered to involve several distinctive areas of the brain working within a faulty network, including the cerebellum, somatosensory cortex, and striatum.
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