Adduction facts for kids

Adduction is a type of movement in your body. It happens when you move a part of your body closer to the middle line of your body. Think of it like bringing your arm down to your side after you've lifted it up. The opposite movement is called abduction, which is when you move a body part away from the middle line.

Anatomical planes in a human body, showing the middle line

How Your Body Moves: Adduction

Muscles are what make your body move. Adduction is controlled by many different muscles throughout your body.

Moving Your Arms

When you lower your arm from being out to the side, you're using adduction at your Shoulder. Some of the muscles that help with this are:

• Subscapularis
• Teres major
• Pectoralis major (your chest muscle)
• Infraspinatus
• Triceps brachii (a muscle at the back of your upper arm)
• Latissimus dorsi (a large muscle in your back)
• Coracobrachialis

Your Hand can also perform adduction at the Wrist. This moves your hand closer to the middle of your body. The muscles involved include:

• Flexor carpi ulnaris
• Extensor carpi ulnaris

Even your Fingers can adduct, which means they move closer together. The muscles for this are:

• Palmar interossei

Your Thumb has a special muscle just for adduction, bringing it closer to your palm:

• Adductor pollicis

Moving Your Legs

When you bring your Thigh closer to your other leg, or cross your legs, you're using adduction at your Hip. A group of muscles called the adductor muscles help with this:

• Adductor longus
• Adductor brevis
• Adductor magnus
• Pectineus
• Gracilis

Your toes can also adduct, moving closer together. The muscles for this are:

• Adductor hallucis
• Plantar interossei

Other Body Parts

Adduction isn't just for arms and legs! Other parts of your body use this movement too:

• Your vocal folds (in your throat) move together (adduct) when you speak or sing.
  • Lateral cricoarytenoid muscle

• Your eyeball can also move towards the middle of your face (adduct).
  • Superior rectus muscle
  • Inferior rectus muscle
  • Medial rectus muscle

Adduction in Scallops

It's not just humans and land animals that use adduction! Scallops, which are a type of bivalve (like clams or oysters), have a very strong adductor muscle. This muscle lets them quickly open and close their shells. Because scallops can swim by rapidly opening and closing their shells, their adductor muscle is much larger and more developed than in other bivalves that don't swim as much.

Images for kids

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  Flexion and extension

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  Abduction and adduction

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  Rotation

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  The lotus position of yoga, demonstrating external rotation of the leg at the hip.

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  Rotating the arm away from the body is external rotation.

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  Rotating the arm closer to the body is internal rotation.

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  The swinging action made during a tennis serve is an example of circumduction

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  A ballerina, demonstrating plantar flexion of the feet

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  Dorsi and plantar flexion of the foot

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  Praying Hands by Albrecht Dürer, demonstrating dorsiflexion of the hands.

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  Example showing inversion and eversion of the foot

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  Eversion of the right foot

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  Inversion of the right foot

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  Examples showing protrusion and retrusion.

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  Elevation and depression of the jaw.

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  Nutation at left, counternutation at right

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  An example of opposition

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  Example of opposition of the thumb and index finger