Why the lumbrical muscle should not be bigger--a force model of the lumbrical in the unloaded human finger.

The present paper investigates the forces and the stresses in the lumbrical and the other finger motors in an unloaded human finger model, with and without the ab-adduction degree of freedom of the MCP joint. Unique solutions are obtained by minimization of the maximal muscle stress calculated with a normal and a variable lumbrical physiological cross-sectional area. It is concluded that in the model with biaxial MCP joint, a stronger than normal lumbrical is not useful in unloaded finger control, and will merely result in spare lumbrical capacity. Also the natural synergism of the lumbrical and the ulnar interosseus in the control of the finger in the sagittal plane is pointed out.