focal dystonia

[iratehamster]

https://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web2/Blumenfeld.html

I've been reading sites about focal dystonia, and it's scaring me to death.  Does anyone here suffer from it, or knows somebody who's afflicted with it?  If you know somebody who has it, how intensely did they practice up until they were stricken with it?  Is it inevitable that everyone who practices fast passages will eventually lose the ability to separate certain fingers when trying to move one of them, and it's simply a matter of some of us reaching that point sooner than others?

[leahcim]

Reading the site [obviously I'm not a qualified welder, so take it with a bucket of salt], I get the impression that you get it from some frequent activity that either uses several fingers together [like reading braille with 3 fingers] or doing something so fast that the brain thinks you're using them together resulting in your brain merging / smearing the representation.

I would then guess, if you do "some activity" for "some length of time" that stimulates the fingers individually you might keep the brain's separate representation of them even if you play fast passages.

At least, it appears that's how they attempt to "cure" it, by retraining using individual stimulation. So perhaps you can prevent it in a similar way?

But, getting an expert view on whether that would help and, if so, what "some activity" might be and how long "some length of time" should be compared with the length of time you play piano, might be a good idea if you're worried about it.

[Perhaps they'll say avoid Hanon to keep finger independence ]