Recurrent branch of the median nerve

Nerve: Recurrent branch of the median nerve
Superficial palmar nerves. (Recurrent branch labeled at center left as "Muscular to abductor, opponens, and flexor brevis pollicis.")
Gray's	subject #210 938
From	median nerve

The recurrent branch of the median nerve (which has also been called "the million dollar nerve"^[1]) is the branch of the median nerve which supplies the thenar muscles.^[2] It is also occasionally referred to as the thenar branch, or the thenar muscular branch, of the median nerve. In the thenar eminence it provides motor innervation to opponens pollicis, abductor pollicis brevis and flexor pollicis brevis. An earlier branch of the median nerve also supplies the lumbricals 1 & 2. All other intrinsic muscles of the hand are receive their motor innervation from branches of the ulnar nerve.

It usually passes distal to the transverse carpal ligament.^[3]

It ends in the opponens pollicis.^[4]

References

1. ^ "Anatomy Tables - Hand". http://anatomy.med.umich.edu/musculoskeletal_system/hand_tables.html. Retrieved 2008-01-06. 
2. ^ Median nerve
3. ^ Kozin SH (1998). "The anatomy of the recurrent branch of the median nerve". J Hand Surg [Am] 23 (5): 852–8. doi:10.1016/S0363-5023(98)80162-7. PMID 9763261. 
4. ^ Ellis, Harold; Susan Standring; Gray, Henry David (2005). Gray's anatomy: the anatomical basis of clinical practice. St. Louis, Mo: Elsevier Churchill Livingstone. p. 728. ISBN 0-443-07168-3. 

External links

• lesson5nervesofhand at The Anatomy Lesson by Wesley Norman (Georgetown University)