Nerve · Head

Supraorbital nerve

Nervus supraorbitalis

The larger of the two end-branches of the frontal nerve, and the main sensory nerve of the forehead and front scalp. It leaves the eye socket through the supraorbital notch or foramen — a step in the upper rim of the orbit that most people can feel through the eyebrow — then turns upward, splits into a medial and a lateral branch, and travels back over the skull to about the level of the crown. On the way past it sends a twig into the lining of the frontal sinus. Because it emerges through a fixed gap in bone at a spot a fingertip can find, it is the one branch of the trigeminal nerve a reader can locate on themselves.