Superior cerebellar artery at a glance
- What it is
- An artery of the posterior circulation supplying the upper cerebellum.
- Location
- It arises from the basilar artery just below its bifurcation, passes below the oculomotor nerve and winds around the midbrain near the trochlear nerve, then divides into medial and lateral branches.
- Function
- It supplies the upper cerebellum, upper pons and part of the midbrain.
- Body system
- Cardiovascular · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA50574 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- The oculomotor nerve passes between it and the posterior cerebral artery.
- It is the most constant of the cerebellar arteries.
Clinical relevance
Occlusion causes ipsilateral limb ataxia and other cerebellar signs. It is the vessel most often compressing the trigeminal nerve in trigeminal neuralgia.
Structures next to the superior cerebellar artery
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Postcommunicating part of posterior cerebral artery · cardiovascular
- Basilar artery · cardiovascular
- Pons · nervous
- Precommunicating part of posterior cerebral artery · cardiovascular
- Parahippocampal gyrus · nervous
- Optic tract · nervous
- Peduncle of midbrain · nervous
- Midbrain · nervous
- Fusiform gyrus · nervous
- Inferior colliculus · nervous
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Superior cerebellar artery (FMA50574). EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service.
- OpenStax. Anatomy and Physiology 2e, §20.1 Structure and Function of Blood Vessels. Rice University, 2022.
- Mitsuhashi N. et al. (2009). BodyParts3D: 3D structure database for anatomical concepts. Nucleic Acids Research 37, D782–D785. Data © The Database Center for Life Science, CC BY 4.0.
Related anatomy
Explore the whole body in the interactive 3D human anatomy model, or browse the A–Z list of human structures.