Nerve · Head

Suboccipital nerve

Nervus suboccipitalis

The dorsal ramus of the first cervical nerve, and the motor supply of the small deep muscles at the base of the skull. It emerges between the skull and the posterior arch of the atlas, below the vertebral artery as that vessel curves toward the foramen magnum, and enters the suboccipital triangle, supplying the three muscles that bound that triangle — rectus capitis posterior major and the two obliques — together with rectus capitis posterior minor lying medial to it, and usually a branch to semispinalis capitis as well. What is unusual is what it does not do: almost alone among dorsal rami it carries essentially no supply to skin. It is a nerve of the deepest layer of the neck, invisible from the surface, driving the muscles that make the fine adjustments of head position.