Dorsal ramus of spinal nerve
Posterior division of a spinal nerve
The dorsal ramus of spinal nerve, posterior ramus of spinal nerve, or posterior primary division is the posterior division of a spinal nerve. The dorsal rami provide motor innervation to the deep (a.k.a. intrinsic or true) muscles of the back, and sensory innervation to the skin of the posterior portion of the head, neck and back.
A spinal nerve splits within the intervertebral foramen to form a dorsal ramus and a ventral ramus. The dorsal ramus then turns to course posterior-ward before splitting into a medial branch and a lateral branch. Both these branches provide motor innervation to deep back muscles. In the neck and upper back, the medial branch is also responsible for providing sensory innervation of the skin; in the lower back, the lateral branch does so. All medial branches additionally also provide sensory innervation to the zygapophyseal joints and periosteum of the vertebral column.
Structure
Ventral root axons join with dorsal root ganglia to form mixed spinal nerves (below). These then merge to form peripheral nerves.
The public source identifies “Dorsal ramus of spinal nerve” as posterior division of a spinal nerve. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Dorsal, ramus and spinal.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dorsal ramus of spinal nerve” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.