What happens if you damage your trochlear nerve?
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What happens if you damage your trochlear nerve?
Injury to the trochlear nerve can cause weakness in the ability to move the eyeball downward. This effects the vertical alignment of images resulting in double vision known formally as diplopia. To fix this, patients learn to lower their head (tuck in their chin) to bring the two eyes back to a single visual field.
How does trochlear nerve move the eye?
Cranial nerve 4, also called the trochlear nerve, controls the movement of the superior oblique muscle. This muscle moves the eye down and rotates the top of the toward the nose. It also helps pull the eye outward when the eye is looking downward.
Is the trochlear nerve sensory or motor?
The trochlear, abducens, accessory, and hypoglossal nerves are only motor nerves; the trigeminal nerve is both sensory and motor; the oculomotor nerve is both motor and parasympathetic; the facial glossopharyngeal, and vagus nerves have sensory, motor, and parasympathetic components (Standring, 2008).
What muscles does the trochlear nerve control?
The only muscle the trochlear nerve innervates, the superior oblique muscle, is the longest and thinnest muscle among the extraocular muscles.
Is trochlear nerve sympathetic or parasympathetic?
Why is the trochlear nerve unique?
The trochlear nerve is unique among the cranial nerves in several respects: It is the smallest nerve in terms of the number of axons it contains. It has the greatest intracranial length. It is the only cranial nerve that exits from the dorsal (rear) aspect of the brainstem.
What is the function of the extraocular muscle innervated by each trochlear nerve?
This “pulley” system afforded by the trochlea makes the superior oblique unique among the extraocular muscles and allows for its muscular functions of depression, abduction, and intorsion of the eye.
Where does trochlear nerve Decussation?
The trochlear nerve pair originates from a pair of symmetrical trochlear nuclei within the medial midbrain at the level of the inferior colliculus. The left and right nerves then travel dorsally surrounded by the periaqueductal gray matter, decussating before their exit in the dorsal midbrain.
What does the right trochlear nerve innervate?
The trochlear nerve (/ˈtrɒklɪər/), also called the fourth cranial nerve or CN IV, is a motor nerve (a somatic efferent nerve) that innervates just one muscle: the superior oblique muscle of the eye, which operates through the pulley-like trochlea.