Nerve · Head

Lesser occipital nerve

Nervus occipitalis minor

A cutaneous nerve of the neck that finishes on the head, supplying the skin behind the ear and over the upper back corner of the scalp. Despite sitting among the cranial nerve meshes it is not a cranial nerve at all: it comes from the ventral ramus of the second cervical nerve, hooks around the accessory nerve, and climbs the back edge of sternocleidomastoid before piercing the deep fascia near the skull. Its territory sits between the greater occipital nerve behind it and the great auricular nerve in front — three neighbours from the same cervical source dividing the skin behind the ear between them, with borders that overlap rather than meeting at a line.