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Creative Hands

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Abstract

Creative hands can be traced back to cave art, decorations and various types of artistically designed objects created over the last 100,000 years, primarily in South Africa and Europe. As a symbol of creativity, the hand plays a key role in our culture, particularly in art and music. However, many of the most well-known artists and musicians suffered from various types of hand problems but were still able to perform their art, thanks to well-preserved brain function – their creative capacity. Musicians lacking one arm have been able to perform music at very high artistic levels. The brains of experienced musicians may be somewhat different from the brains of nonmusicians, with well-developed white matter and an enlarged corpus callosum connecting the two brain hemispheres, and in violin players the cortical representation of the left hand may be enlarged. Experienced musicians may view their instrument as an integral part of their bodies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hand Surgery Department of Clinical Sciences, Malmö Lund University Skäne University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden

    Göran Lundborg MD, PhD

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  1. Göran Lundborg MD, PhD
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© 2014 Springer-Verlag London

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Lundborg, G. (2014). Creative Hands. In: The Hand and the Brain. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5334-4_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5334-4_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-5333-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-5334-4

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