The moment arms and leverage of the human finger muscles

Abstract

The moment arm of a muscle’s force represents the muscle’s leverage or mechanical advantage in producing a joint moment. It is indicative of the muscle’s potential to contribute to actuation of a joint in a particular joint motion direction and defines the role of the muscle, for example, as a joint flexor or abductor. The aims of this study were, firstly, to measure the moment arms of the flexor and extensor muscles of the metacarpophalangeal (MCP), proximal interphalangeal (PIP) and distal interphalangeal (DIP) joints, and the moment arms of the major abductor and adductor muscles of the metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joint of each finger in the hand; secondly, to assess the effect of change in joint angle on these moment arms; and thirdly, to determine if there are differences in a given flexor or extensor’s muscle moment arms between the joints it spans on a given finger, and across its tendon slips to multiple fingers. The tendon-excursion method was used to measure instantaneous muscle moment arms in nine fresh-frozen entire forearm cadaver specimens. Joint flexion angle was found to have significant effects on the moment arms of the extensor muscles at the MCP and PIP joints (p < 0.05). In contrast, the digital flexor muscles maintained relatively constant moment arms through the range of joint flexion. The moment arms of the digital flexors and extensors spanning multiple joints in a finger were largest at the MCP joints and smallest at the DIP joints. The findings demonstrate greater torque generating capacity for tasks such as grasping at the proximal interphalangeal joints, and smaller torque capacity for finer movement control at the distal interphalangeal joints. The dataset generated in this study may be useful in the development and validation of computational models used in surgical planning, and rehabilitation.