Yes, I see your point, Bob. Here is another conundrum. Let's call it the thumb conundrum.Abduction is usually a movement in the frontal plane, but according to a kinesiology textbook I have here by Neumann, this is not true of the thumb. Because of the embryonic rotation of the thumb, its abduction is movement in the sagittal plane, perpendicular to the plane of the palm. If that is so, then what DO we call movement of the thumb away from the index finger in the frontal plane? The book provides no answer for that. If I put my hand flat on a table and spread all five digits apart in that plane, I am abducting digits II-V but not digit I. What am I doing to digit I?
Ken Afternoon Ken:Got tired of grading my 61 anatomy exams (all essay questions this time -- I must be nuts), so I thought I would think on this and see what I can come up. I had an idea, but then (you know how it is sometimes) I wasn't totally sure, and rather than shooting off my mouth and possibly being wrong I did some digging.
In the latest edition of Gray's (39th ed., published by Elsevier, pg. 923-924) all of the movements of the thumb are defined, with the movement you mention below defined as palmar abduction.
I have attached a pdf file of figure 53.49 of Gray', pg. 924 -- hope this helps.
Oh -- for some reason our campus server sometimes corrupts Macintosh files, so if the pdf file doesn't open first try changing the extension from what ever it is in your mailbox to pdf, then retry opening it.
If that doesn't do it I will send it as a Photoshop file.Thanks for forcing me to look this up -- never a bad thing to have to relearn something.
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Attachment:
thumb_movements.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document