Intro | Abducens | Facial | Glossopharyngeal | Hypoglossal | Oculomotor | Optic | Spinal Accessory | Statoacoustic | Trigeminal | Trochlear | Vagus
Part 1: Image-Mapped Tutorial
Part 2: Matching Self-Test
Part 3: Multiple-Choice Self-Test
Cranial Nerve 8 - Statoacoustic (Auditory-Vestibular) (VIII)
The statoacoustic nerve is a purely sensory nerve that conveys information on both sound (auditory) and equilibrium (vestibular).
| Advanced |
An alternative name for cranial nerve VIII is the Vestibularcochlear nerve (Parent, 1996). There are two main branches to this sensory nerve, the cochlear and the vestibular. The cochlear branch originates in the organ of Corti within the inner ear, forming the spinal ganglion as it passes through the internal auditory meatus. Nuclei for this acoustic branch are located in the medulla and synapse in the thalamus before reaching the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex. The vestibular branch originates in the semicircular canals (saccule and utricle) of the inner ear and forms the vestibular ganglion before synapsing in the pons and cerebellum. The cochlear branch conveys encoded information about sound for the perception of hearing, whereas the vestibular branch conveys encoded information about body position for the perception of equilibrium.
| Reference |
Parent, A. (1996). Carpenter's human neuroanatomy (9th ed.). London: Williams & Wilkins.