Internal Carotid Artery Scheme (Side branches, Circle of Willis) | Anatomy

All right, guys. So, this video is about the internal carotid. I just want to start by saying that everything you see in this video was made to be schematic for you to hopefully be able to visualize it. Now, essentially, as the common carotid artery ascends along the neck, it will divide at the region of the

upper thyroid cartilage into the external and the internal carotid arteries. With the external carotid here in orange, as we're not really going to talk about this one. Now, initially, the internal carotid is divided into four anatomical parts. However, in a clinical setting, and this really depends on the source you're studying from, you may find it divided

into seven anatomical segments. I will go through the four anatomical parts, but I will also show you the seven segment scheme later in this video. So, the first part is the cervical part in the neck region, hence the name cervical part. Uh it goes up, and then it goes inside the the carotid canal, as you see here,

where it now becomes the petrous part. So, if we take this area out and visualize it a little bit, you will see the carotid canal here. It's initially a canal within the petrous part of the temporal bone. So, this is just a coronal or a frontal section of the canal. Now, the internal carotid will continue

up through the canal, and then it will give off some important side branches, and they're called the caroticotympanic branches, supplying the uh the tympanic cavity or or the middle ear. Now, as it leaves the canal and enter the middle cranial fossa, it becomes a cavernous part. And here is maybe a better representation of it. It goes right