Nerve · Neck

Great auricular nerve

Nervus auricularis magnus

The largest of the cervical plexus's ascending branches, and one of the few nerves you can sometimes see through the skin. It curls round the posterior border of sternocleidomastoid at that muscle's midpoint and climbs straight up its outer surface towards the ear, lying beneath only platysma and skin. It supplies the skin over the angle of the jaw, over the parotid gland and on both surfaces of the lower ear. That jaw-angle patch is worth knowing: it is the one part of the face the trigeminal nerve does not reach, because the skin there belongs to the neck.