lOMoARcPSD|4225041

Trigeminal nerve

Medicine (Queen's University Belfast)

StuDocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university

Downloaded by bava tharini (medicophile@yahoo.com)
 lOMoARcPSD|4225041

Trigeminal nerve
• Largest cranial nerve
• Nerve of the first pharyngeal arch (mandibular arch)
• Mixed nerve (both sensory and motor)
• General sensation from face, scalp, eye, nasal and oral cavities
• Motor nerve to several muscles including muscles of mastication

Four nuclei
1. Main sensory nucleus
• Lies in the posterior part of pons
• Lateral to the motor nucleus
• Continuous with spinal nucleus
Below

2. Spinal nucleus
• Superiorly continuous with main sensory nucleus in the pons
• Extends inferiorly through the entire length of the medulla
• Into upper part of spinal cord as far as second cervical segment

3. Mesencephalic nucleus
• Composed of columns of unipolar nerve cells in the lateral part of the gray matter
around cerebral aqueduct
• Extend inferiorly into the pons as far as sensory nucleus

4. Motor nucleus
• in the pons medial to the main sensory nucleus
Motor nerve supplies V3
– Muscles of mastication
– Tensor tympani
– Tensor veli palatini
– Mylohyoid muscle
– Anterior belly of digastric muscle

Sensory components
Fibres carrying sensation of:
• pain, temperature, touch, pressure from skin of the face
• mucous membrane of oral and nasal cavities, frontal sinus, teeth, soft and
hard palate (cell bodies in trigeminal ganglion)

Lesion of trigeminal nerve

Results in the following conditions
• Loss of general sensation from face, mucous membrane of oral and nasal cavities
• Loss of corneal reflex (afferent limb – V nerve)
• Flaccid paralysis of muscles of mastication

Downloaded by bava tharini (medicophile@yahoo.com)