cranial nerves Flashcards
motor neurones
motor neurons emerge from the CNS and they go outwards to muscles or glands and other structures
- they convey information to those structures and cause them to perform an action
sensory neurones
start at the receptor cells somewhere in the periphery, not in the CNS, and they convey information about the outside world or the inside world or the workings of that structure back to the CNS
somatic motor neurones
innervate skeletal muscles
- Skeletal muscles are under voluntary control so we can choose to contract those muscles
-some of them are able to involuntarily contract due to reflex arcs
visceral motor (sympathetic) neurons
innervate smooth/ cardiac muscles, glands
- never have conscious control over these
- fight or flight - stressful situations
visceral motor - parasympathetic
innervate smooth/ cardiac muscle, glands
- vegetative situations
somatic sensory neurones
- the modality they convey is called somatic sensation.
- We often just call that General sensation
○ E.g. touch, pressure, temp, pain, chemical stimulation
special sensation sensory neurones
- all of those other senses
olfaction, smell, Vision, sight, gustation, taste equilibrium (balance) sort of detection of the position of our head in space and how our head is moving in space and finally audition
visceral sensation sensory neurones
- the information about what’s going on in with our viscera (our organs)
what is the nervous system divided into
- CNS
- PNS
what does the central nervous system consist of
the brain and the spinal cord
- and the role of the central nervous system is to coordinate and integrate incoming and outgoing neural signals.
○ So thinking and learning for example but also reflexes as well.
○ We’ll have interneurons and our central nervous system which basically take an incoming signal, act on it and activate an outgoing signal
So it’s not just conscious functions., It’s also can be unconscious functions as well
PNS
Peripheral nervous system are always other nerves which are conveying information
to the periphery or conveying information back from the periphery.
pairs of spinal nerves
- 8 pairs of cervical
- 12 pairs of thoracic
- 5 pairs of lumbar
- 5 pairs of sacral
- 1 pair of coccygeal nerves
how are spinal nerves numbered
each set is numbered superior to inferior
what are the spinal nerves
always mixed nerves (motor and sensory) when they leave the vertebral column
- conduct neural impulses to and from CNS
cranial nerves
- 12 pairs
- they emerge from the central nervous system again and the vast majority of them emerge from the brain and emerge anteriorly to posteriorly.
They exit the skull anteriorly to posteriorly as well
Cranial nerves a little bit different in terms of where they emerge, how they are
named and how they function
- they emerge from the central nervous system again and the vast majority of them emerge from the brain and the emerge anteriorly to posteriorly.
- And they exit the skull anteriorly to posteriorly as well
Other way that they differ from the spinal nerves is that unlike spinal nerves They’re not necessarily mixed so much more specific in their function
- conduct neural impulses to and from CNS
.
where do cranial nerves leave the skull
through foramina
cranial nerve 1-3
1 - olfactory
2- optic
3 - oculometer
cranial nerve 4- 6
4 - trochlear
5 - trigeminal
6 - abducens
cranial nerve 7-9
7- facial
8 - vestibulocochlear
9 - glossopharyngeal
cranial nerve 10-12
10 -vagus
11 - spinal accessory
12 - hypoglossal
olfactory nerve
The olfactory nerve conveys sensory fibers only and those sensory fibers come from the nasal epithelium concerning olfaction (smell) it’s
associated with it is also something called cranial nerve 0
○ associated with possibly detecting pheromones, but it’s kind of not well understood in humans.
where does olfactory nerve enter skull
cribriform foramina.
optic nerve
Optic nerve is also sensory only and it conveys special sensory fibres from the retina concerning Vision.
So light waves hit your retina, they are transduced by the rod and Cone cells into action potentials both to convey that through neurons in your optic nerve
the left and the right sides merge together in this kind of eight shape and then split
again
that’s an easy way of spotting the optic nerve it got this 8 shape.
where does optic nerve enter the skull
optic canal
oculomotor nerve motor function
motor function in the orbital cavity
- We have two sets of muscles in the orbital cavity
○ We call them extraocular muscles and intraocular muscles
○ extraocular muscles are outside the eyeball - they move the eyeball
intraocular muscles are inside the eyeball and they alter the size and position of structures inside the eyeball to allow us to focus light waves and also to regulate the amount of light entering the eye ball
where does the oculomotor nerve convey somatic motor fibres to
the oculomotor nerve conveys somatic motor fibres to the medial rectus Superior, the inferior rectus and inferior oblique muscles
- these are all muscles that move the eyeball.
It also send somatic motor fibres over to the levator palpebrae superioris.
Contraction of this muscle elevates the upper eyelid and open your eyelids.
where does the oculomotor nerve convey parasympathetic fibres to
They go to the sphincter pupillae which is going to constrict the pupil to stop light waves getting in and the ciliary muscle which is important in focusing light onto the retina.