Yesterday, my anatomy group continued our cadaver dissection by locating the brachial plexus, a particular bundle of nerves situated near the axilla (armpit) which arises from C5-T1 and innervates the entire upper limb.
Removing nearly all the superficial tissue of the axilla revealed nothing more than some thin vessels and nerves. Did we completely miss something which should have been obvious? After all, we mistook the gender of our cadaver at first. Wouldn’t it be embarassing if we lost the brachial plexus too? 😀 Come to find out, we had been staring at the brachial plexus for quite some time without realizing it. What we had originally labeled as “some thick artery or nerve” was actually the plexus bundled up with some fascia-like tissue. After probing through this bundle, the characteristic arrangement of the nerve fibers became apparent. Success!
We proceeded to identify some of the major branches of the nerve network: radial nerve, axillary nerve, musculocutaneous nerve, etc. Kudos to our master dissector Megan for locating the *elusive* structure. 🙂
