Branches
The cervical plexus has two types of branches: cutaneous and muscular.
- Cutaneous (4 branches):
- Lesser occipital nerve - innervates lateral part of occipital region (C2 ONLY)
- Great auricular nerve - innervates skin near concha auricle and external acoustic meatus (C2&C3)
- Transverse cervical nerve - innervates anterior region of neck (C2&C3)
- Supraclavicular nerves - innervate region of supraspinatus, shoulder, and upper thoracic region (C3,C4)
- Muscular
- Ansa cervicalis (loop formed from C1-C3), etc. (geniohyoid (C1 only), thyrohyoid (C1 only), sternothyroid, sternohyoid, omohyoid)
- Phrenic (C3-C5 (primarily C4))-innervates diaphragm and the pericardium
- Segmental branches (C1-C4)- innervates anterior and middle scalenes
Read more about this topic: Cervical Plexus
Famous quotes containing the word branches:
“Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish?”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“It is comforting when one has a sorrow to lie in the warmth of one’s bed and there, abandoning all effort and all resistance, to bury even one’s head under the cover, giving one’s self up to it completely, moaning like branches in the autumn wind. But there is still a better bed, full of divine odors. It is our sweet, our profound, our impenetrable friendship.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)