The Facial Nerve – Cranial Nerve VII
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Dr. P here talking about the 7th nerve,
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an important one.
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It travels with two other nerves.
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The 6th nerve right above it
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comes out of the pontomedullary sulcus
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and has an antero-superolateral course.
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It's a little distanced away from the 7th nerve,
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which has a more lateral orientation.
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But this portion of the nerve is intramedullary.
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And we're going to talk,
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in the next vignette,
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about the true origin of the 7th nerve.
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For the apparent origin,
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the one you see when you look
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macroscopically at the brainstem
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is along the origin of the 7th and 8th nerve canal,
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right at the origin of the canaliculus.
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Traveling with the 7th nerve is this chubby pink nerve.
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And you can see they both have an anterosuperolateral
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course or an antero-superolateral course.
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They travel together as the 7th and 8th nerve complexes,
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and they're actually going to be broken
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down into a four nerve group.
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You're going to have the superior and inferior vestibular
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nerves in the back and the 7th nerve up and
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the cochlear nerve down in the front.
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So, if you were going to produce a sagittal section of this area,
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something like this, or a sagittal oblique,
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and you were looking along the sagittal,
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this would be anterior, this would be posterior.
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So you'd have four nerves.
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There's one.
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There's two.
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There's three.
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And what are those four nerves?
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Well, those four nerves are seven up,
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facial nerve, anterior,
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coch. down.
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So, this would be facial.
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This would be cochlear.
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And in the back you'd have superior vestibular
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and inferior vestibular.
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These are actually going to be divided up by the
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crista falciformis, horizontally,
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and Bill's Bar, vertically.
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Let's move on, shall we?
Stephen J Pomeranz, MD
Chief Medical Officer, ProScan Imaging. Founder, MRI Online
ProScan Imaging
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