Innervation and Vascularization of the Auricula Correlated with the Loci of Auriculotherapy

Abstract

The macroscopic study of ten adult external ears has shown that auriculotherapy has an anatomical substratum allowing us to include it in the reflexotherapies.

The originating zone of the auricular loci is either cerebrospinal or neurovascular.

For cerebrospinal participation, the great auricular nerve supplies all the free and posterior portion of the auricula; the auriculotemporal nerve the antitragus, the intertragic notch, the tragus, a part of the lobule and the fossa triangularis.

Lastly, the concha receives its innervation from the auricular ramus of the vagus nerve.

The neurovascular participation includes periarterial and periveinous autonomic fibers depending on the superior cervical sympathetic ganglion. The supports are the superficial temporal artery, the posterior auricular artery and corresponding veins for the free portion and the tragic area; the stylomastoid and posterior tympanic arteries for the concha, and many isolated veins. Usually under analgesic loci an important element, often cerebrospinal, is found; or it is a neurovascular pedicle. But for the topic representations which are usually described-limbs and face on the free part of the auricula, thoracic and abdominal viscera on the concha-this peripheral aspect seems to lose its importance on behalf of the neuraxial organization, either of primary centers, or of suprasegmental centers and specially of the reticular formation.

So, the topic representation on the auricula seems to be essentially the reflection of the convergence, in the reticular formation, of the cerebrospinal innervation of the external ear and collaterals of spinothalamic fibers.