Muscle · Neck

Interspinales cervicis

Musculi interspinales cervicis

Six pairs of very short muscles, each one joining the spine of one neck vertebra to the spine of the one immediately above it, lying either side of the ligament that runs down the midline. They are best developed in the neck, where the spinous processes are split in two and give them a place to sit. Spanning only a single joint each, they can produce very little movement, and their significance lies elsewhere: they carry a high density of the sensory endings that report muscle length, so they are better read as position sensors for individual segments of the neck than as movers of it. What they do produce is a small backward tilt of one vertebra on the next.