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I haven´t been here for a while and have just found this interesting thread that I´m not able to read completely. It´s too long.
I´m beaten by focal distonia in my right hand since autumn 2012, but thank God it´s just a little bit. When I make stroke movements without a guitar, absolutly everything is fine. But when I take my guitar, I´m not able to play a clean flamenco tremolo anymore and either my ringfinger rolls inside touching a string sometimes or ringfinger and pinky stick streched out, pinky under the ringfinger. It became better in order to side effect in deep relaxation of hynosis sessions during my re-education programm.
If you like, then I can post video clips of the year 2005 and a new one I can record this week.
It became better in order to side effect in deep relaxation of hynosis sessions during my re-education programm.
Interesting. I certainly believe this worked for you, but also this method to be a double edged sword and can be a very dangerous thing for the mind. Too many stories of people gettting their head scrambled up after trying to get "help", not guitar help of course. But if it did work for you this points to a more psychological issue than neurological.
this points to a more psychological issue than neurological.
Not necessarily. Deep relaxation helps with many neurological disorders (e.g. Parkinson's) And I haven't ever heard of anybody getting their head scrambled by serious therapists (even though they are called shrinks )
One is about a state of mind, vs something physically wrong with the brain and wiring. Years ago when the discussion was hot topic material, I pointed out a list of 4 things people seemed to describe based on symptoms and treatments, and that these 4 things couldn't really be all the same thing called "focal dystonia". Folks ignored me about and everybody seem to be the doctor regarding this topic. To me, if these be psychological issue than it is a form of performance anxiety and should be dealt with as such. If it be a neurological issue, a special type of therapy is required in order to rewire the brain and fingers. Hence we are dealing with similar symptoms but not the concensus diagnosis and treatment.
I have a hard time following you here. Aren't psychological issues also sometimes dealt with by "rewiring" the brain? (behavioralist psychology I think?). My impression, admitedly as a lay-person, is that the lines between these fields of science are increasingly blurred. A while back I read an interesting article on how stretching works. In the past research had focused mainly on what happens to the muscles when you stretch them. Now, they seem to be paying attention to the role that brain may play in it, starting out with the observation that there is some degree of correlation between how stressed a person feels and overall elasticity of the body. In a nutshell, the idea was that stretching doesn't just work on the muscles, but it also habituates your brain to be more comfortable with certain ranges of movement (convince it that "it's ok" if your legs go that far out, for instance).
I would agree though that there are most likely different causes to what is being called focal dystonia. In that sense it is no different than cancer, which is really a spectrum of diseases that got lumped into one. And if treatments are getting better and better, it's because doctors and researchers have recognized this and adapted the treatments they propose to the various underlying causes of the disease. I suspect the same will be true with focal dystonia the more we find about its causes.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
One is about a state of mind, vs something physically wrong with the brain and wiring. Years ago when the discussion was hot topic material, I pointed out a list of 4 things people seemed to describe based on symptoms and treatments, and that these 4 things couldn't really be all the same thing called "focal dystonia". Folks ignored me about and everybody seem to be the doctor regarding this topic. To me, if these be psychological issue than it is a form of performance anxiety and should be dealt with as such. If it be a neurological issue, a special type of therapy is required in order to rewire the brain and fingers. Hence we are dealing with similar symptoms but not the concensus diagnosis and treatment.
This is not the right forum for in depth discussion but here is a short answer.
It is not either or. Our 'state of mind' has a physical reality. 'State of mind' changes the 'wiring' as you put it.
Our deep understanding of how movement emerges, is organised and controlled is lacking. Therefore it's not surprising that focal dystonia is not that well understood. However it is becoming clear that movement emerges out of a complex organism, influenced by many factors as well as bio-mechanical ones e.g. psychological/social context, internal/external environment.
For each individual with a movement limitation such as focal dystonia some factors will be more or less important and treatment will need to be individualised accordingly. Therefore treatment that works for one may be have a different emphasis than for another.
Here is an easy to read review of focal dystonia. The risk factors include previous injury, biomechanics, sensorimotor as well as psychosocial ones. E.g one person suffered a hand/nerve injury triggering focal dystonia, another perfectionistic practice. However psychosocial factors will be present to some degree in all. Unless you are dead and someone is pulling on the tendons in your cadaver, movement emerges from the organism as a whole.
Another relatively easy read review of current theories of motor control and an interesting one on the effect of motor system on perception for those interested:
Next time, before putting it in the pan, try stretching your steak or filet. Muscles can´t really be stretched in the sense of dimensionally prolonging a muscle. Only muscle-prolonging exercises can in the long term, by adding cells lengthwise (like with exercises I´ve described in the past).
Stretching thus, apart from a number of minor side-effectsis, is rather useless, .
Regarding state of mind, I´d like to think that a student with a lecturing example of relaxed and fluent technique, hence an adapted imagination of seamless perfromance will hardly be prone to something like FD, for him not getting stuck in counter acting apparatus / simultaneously active antagonists / neural overload /misprinting in cortex.
Rather who is expecting advance through overcoming (erringly located) limit in speed or in fluency by force / cramping and sustained repetition of such method (like me unfortunately in a past period of time) may be provoking FD.
With a firm premise of avoiding superfluous contraction / muscle engagement (whether of a muscle actually needed for a movement or of muscles that should be passive / suspended) a musician should not be risking FD.
Students given an imagination of smooth execution should be doing great. So, in the end could it all be be bound to what´s in one´s head / anticipation? I think so, indeed.
One is about a state of mind, vs something physically wrong with the brain and wiring.
Look up "encephiatrics".
PSYCHIATRY and neurology merging or not debate it seems. Sure one day, EVERYTHING can merge into a single framework discipline, including particle physics and cosmology and chemistry, but till then we need to keep things separate IMO.
As for guitarists with FD, those recent articles make it all look like a huge mess of confusion for doctors AND patients IMO. It seems FD is a symptom, it could have many different causes, and varying formations of "illness" or "disease" description, with wildly varying options for treatment. Horrifying IMO. Cancer as the analogy above doesn't work IMO, because regardless of the manifestation or causes, the disease and it's treatment are clear....abnormal cells growing and a need to kill them. I am sure there are better analogies for FD's weirdness.
That makes sense as far as the analogy goes. I stand corrected.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
Sure one day, EVERYTHING can merge into a single framework discipline, including particle physics and cosmology and chemistry, but till then we need to keep things separate IMO.
I know you are looking for a simple answer but it will never come, movement and the human is complex. Reductionism isn't going to help with focal dystonia or any other movement issue.
There is evidence that you can teach your brain to change your neural pathways. Your mind can change your brain and your brain can change your mind. (IE a blow to the head)
PSYCHIATRY and neurology merging or not debate it seems. Sure one day, EVERYTHING can merge into a single framework discipline, including particle physics and cosmology and chemistry, but till then we need to keep things separate IMO.
There is evidence that you can teach your brain to change your neural pathways. Your mind can change your brain and your brain can change your mind. (IE a blow to the head)
Indeed it is. It is called Neuroplasticity and it is scientifically proven. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity) (Just for reference)
PSYCHIATRY and neurology merging or not debate it seems. Sure one day, EVERYTHING can merge into a single framework discipline, including particle physics and cosmology and chemistry, but till then we need to keep things separate IMO.
Disagree.
Disagree that one day things can merge into a single framework, or disagree that sciences need to remain as separate disciplines for now?
Disagree that one day things can merge into a single framework, or disagree that sciences need to remain as separate disciplines for now?
Disagree with the spirit of the statement you made. Things are slowly moving towards the brain and mind becoming one. I like to think of this as a continuum rather than an all-or-none phenomenon. Cheers!
I face the problem and hope orsonw sharing me the way to cure
Hi, sorry to hear about your fingers problem. If you do in fact have task specific focal dystonia there is no quick, simple answer to recover. As has been said by myself and others here, recovery has to be done on an individual basis. An internet search and DIY will probably cause more problems for you. I would suggest consulting with a professional who is experienced in working with this, your average family doctor is not.
Much remains unknown about the causes and treatment of task specific focal dystonia. My personal bias for treatment is to use sensorimotor retraining. There are recent studies showing benefit from ventro-oral thalamotomy, this is a minimally invasive way of destroying a tiny part of your brain so maybe not the place to start.
Hello, Thank you for your guidance. I don't understand why I can do everything with my right fingers and I can't tell what their problem is. But I realized that my fingers problem only occurred when I play tremolo or arpeggio. I can not play fast like before. Without playing the guitar, I felt my fingers still normal.
I ran across an interesting article recently published in Brain Sciences on a treatment for focal dystonia. Here's the abstract:
"A sensory trick is a specific maneuver that temporarily improves focal dystonia. We describe a case of musician's dystonia in the right-hand fingers of a patient, who showed good and immediate improvement after using an electrical stimulation-mimicking sensory trick. A 49-year-old professional guitarist presented with chronic involuntary flexion of the right-hand third and fourth fingers that occurred during guitar performances. Electrical stimulation with a frequency of 40 Hz and an intensity of 1.5 times the sensory threshold was administered on the third and fourth fingernails of the right hand, which facilitated fluent guitar playing. While he played guitar with and without electrical stimulation, we measured the surface electromyograms (sEMG) of the right extensor digitorum and flexor digitorum superficialis muscles to evaluate the sensory-trick-like effects of electrical stimulation. This phenomenon can offer clues for developing electrical stimulation-based treatment devices for focal dystonia. Electrical stimulation has the advantage that it can be turned off to avoid habituation. Moreover, the device is easy to use and portable. These findings warrant further investigation into the use of sensory stimulation for treating focal dystonia."
Let me “zap” my fingers before I hit the stage. Also it is too cold to play in this hall, I need hand/finger warmers. Actually, a hit of marajuana/bump of coke/shot of tequila usually does the trick…
All this points to performance anxiety to me, and probably needs to be dealt with as such. They way I have worked on it over the years was with the music itself. Also, I had mentioned years ago about vitamin D. My doctor said they don’t know why it helps but it improves many strange issues. I did an experiment when I ran out of my D supplements. I was fine for a few weeks and then noticed something in my fingers after I had long forgotten I had stopped taking them. So there is something physical going on there, I certainly recommend a serious regimen of D supplements, especially musicians that work at night.
Horrifying quote by Paco de Lucia, one that I live by, as terrible as it is: “If you think you are going to make a mistake, you are LOST!”.
Digging myself out of that “hole” of feeling like at any moment it was gonna fall apart, was the key to arriving at a place where everything feels more than “easy”, rather, it is fun.
All this points to performance anxiety to me, and probably needs to be dealt with as such.
Well, to be fair, the abstract doesn't say he experienced FD only during performances. [There might be a translation issue, given the Japanese authorship]. I've never heard of FD that occurred selectively; only during performances but not during all other playing.
And for those of us who don't perform and who have FD, coping strategies for performance anxiety won't help.
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