In the 1980s, Frank Wilson was a pioneer in the establishment of performing arts medicine in the United States and Europe. He was a co-founder and neurologist for the University of California, San Francisco's Health Program for Performing Artists in 1986, where his research focused on decreased hand control in musicians. In 1989, he accepted a one-year appointment as a visiting professor of neurology at the University of Düsseldorf among Germany, where he organized a research team examining focal hand dystonia in musicians. Dr. Wilson maintained his work with performing artists after returning to California in 1990, and he initiated a trial of music-learning experiences for patients in the neurological rehabilitation program at Mt. He worked as a neurologist on a multidisciplinary team at the Levi Strauss Corporation in San Francisco for two years, examining upper extremity injuries among textile designers.

In 1996, he accepted a position as the medical director of the Read More chevron_right

In the 1980s, Frank Wilson was a pioneer in the establishment of performing arts medicine in the United States and Europe. He was a co-founder and neurologist for the University of California, San Francisco's Health Program for Performing Artists in 1986, where his research focused on decreased hand control in musicians. In 1989, he accepted a one-year appointment as a visiting professor of neurology at the University of Düsseldorf among Germany, where he organized a research team examining focal hand dystonia in musicians. Dr. Wilson maintained his work with performing artists after returning to California in 1990, and he initiated a trial of music-learning experiences for patients in the neurological rehabilitation program at Mt. He worked as a neurologist on a multidisciplinary team at the Levi Strauss Corporation in San Francisco for two years, examining upper extremity injuries among textile designers.

In 1996, he accepted a position as the medical director of the Health Program for Performing Artists, and in 2001, he accepted a position as Clinical Professor of Neurology at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he joined a clinical research team exploring deep brain stimulation for patients with complicated movement disorders. Wilson's lifelong fascination in the neurology of human hand control is reflected in two volumes that investigate the neurological and anthropological foundations of expert hand use. Tone Deaf and All Thumbs is the first. The second, The Hand: How Its Usage Changes the Brain, Language, and Human Civilization, was released by Pantheon Books in 1998 and received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for nonfiction that year.

With the publishing of The Hand, he has presented his work and ideas to a large community of artists and educators who believe that the human hand and brain are an anatomically and behaviorally integrated system - biology's not-so-secret formula for individual human intellect, creativity, and autonomy.