14 Lateral Neck Region
The cervical plexus is a plexus of the ventral rami of the first four cervical spinal nerves, which are located from C1 to C4 in the cervical segment in the neck. The branches of the cervical plexus emerge from the posterior triangle at Erb’s point, a point midway on the posterior border of the sternocleidomastoid. The cervical plexus has two types of branches: cutaneous and muscular. The cutaneous branches are the lesser occipital nerve (C2), the great auricular nerve (C2, 3), the transverse cervical nerve (C2, 3), and the supraclavicular nerves (C3, 4). The muscular branches are the ansa cervicalis, phrenic, and segmental.