You might use this motion when swinging a hammer. The term ulnarly means “toward the pinky side”. The word radially just means “toward the thumb side”. The wrist joint flexes and extends, but also radially and ulnarly deviates (moves from side to side). This motion is created by the extensor pollicis longus tendon. Retropulsion is the technical term for “lifting the thumb off a table while keeping the hand flat”. Abduction helps you get your hand around large objects, like a jar of peanut butter or a two liter bottle. This joint is commonly affected by arthritis.Ībduction and adduction are used to describe the thumb’s motion out of and into the palm, respectively. This motion occurs at the carpometacarpal joint of the thumb, at the thumb base. I’ll discuss the following motions:Ĭircumduction is the technical term for “moving around in a circle”. The next joint down, however, is highly specialized and allows several unique movements not possible in the fingers. The thumb has two joints at the end and middle which flex and extend, just like the fingers. It moves in unique ways compared with the fingers. The thumb is responsible for 50% of the function of our hands. Some degree of hyperextension can be normal, but it’s also a term that describes an injury, when the finger is “bent back” and dislocates or fractures. A perfectly straight finger might be called a finger “in full extension”, but some finger joints extend past zero degrees – this is called hyperextension. The muscles that make the fingers extend are on the back side of your forearm. As the extensor muscles fire, their tendons pull on the finger bones to straighten them out. Terms like straighten out, point, stretch out, and spread out are used to describe extension of the fingers.Įxtensor tendons attach on the top, or back side of the fingers. Try it on your own hand without touching your other fingers! The adjacent fingers move with the finger you’re trying to flex, because they’re connected higher up in the forearm. You can see this if you try to bend these fingers individually, without moving the other fingers. One cool anatomy fact is that the flexor tendons that move the small, ring, and middle finger usually have a single, common muscle where they start from. When all the finger flexor muscles and tendons pull together, you make a tight fist. Usually, each finger joint can be controlled individually – you can bend the distal joint (at the finger tip) and the proximal joint (in the middle of the finger) separately. When the muscle fires, the attached tendon pulls its finger into a curled, flexed position into the palm. The flexor muscles on the palm side of the forearm form into flexor tendons which run into the palm and attach to each finger. Patients use many terms for finger flexion: We flex our fingers to grab and hold onto objects and extend our fingers to reach out for things. The fingers move in two main ways: flexion and extension. Know the correct terms to describe the motions of your fingers, thumb, and wrist so you can accurately describe when you have pain and what makes it worse.Įach of your hands has four fingers – the index, middle, ring, and small fingers.
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