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SPECIAL SENSES AND CRANIAL NERVES

Check out the best optical illusions!!

BEFORE CLASS:  BACKGROUND AND PREPARATION
  1. Preview text chapters, lab manual, Powerpoint presentations, web resources
  2. Print out handouts for this section of course

 

GOALS PRESENTATIONS ACTIVITIES
  1. Learn the anatomical and histological structures and how they work for the four special senses:  Smell, Taste, Vision, Hearing/Balance

Readings from The Natural History of the Senses

Head and Neck III:  Special Senses

 

Optic Nerve Blind Spot

Eye and Ear Anatomy

  1. Review the 12 cranial nerves as a way to reinforce overall functional anatomy of head region
  2. Focus on trigeminal nerve and use it to organize facial region

Head and Neck IV:  Review--Cranial Nerves

 

Cranial nerve testing and function

View trigeminal nerve dissection on cadaver

WEB RESOURCES

Space Sickness and the Vestibular System (great site for understanding balance) [link]

Extrinsic Eye Muscles--animation showing deficits

Lens of eye--focus or accommodation animation

Animation showing lens focusing in near-sighted and far-sighted eye with and without eye glasses

Sound entering from external through middle ear animation

Virtual tour of the ear (more than you could ever want to know about the ear)

Nice review of cranial nerves--includes clinical tests for nerves and cryptogram puzzle of nerves (Washington U)

More detail cranial nerves, but some missing (Yale Medical)

Review with photos of nerves in skull--check out branches of Trigeminal (Loyola)

Nice details on retina from University of Utah--great views through ophthalmoscope of retina

Incredible details on the retina (plus overview of eye anatomy)--whole University of Utah eye center site)

Incredible detail on hearing function [link] (from online Nervous System textbook)

 

DETAILED LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Special Senses

  1. Construct a robust understanding of the structures involved in each special sense--smell, taste, vision and hearing--that includes their detailed anatomy, how they function in interpreting the input and transfering to their respective cranial nerves
  2. Understand the nasal epithelium including its location and the role if its special smell-sensing neurons
  3. Know the kinds of taste sensations, where they are located and which cranial nerves carry that information to the brain.
  4. Illustrate the role of the different eye support structures including eyelashes, eyebrowns, eyelids, conjunctiva, tear glands
  5. Explain the role of the extrinsic eye muscles including their location, movements they cause and cranial nerves involved
  6. Construct a detailed model of the eye as an optic device that explains how the component parts of the eyeball function including sclera, choroid, iris, pupil, lens, ciliary body and muscle, anterior and posterior segments, retina, cones, rods, optic nerve
  7. Analyze the importance of looking into the eye and what can be seen at the back of the eyeball that might carry importance for diabetes and melanoma.
  8. Trace the flow of sound from outside the body, through the outer ear and middle ear to be interpreted in the inner ear.
  9. Know the functions of all of the components of the physical parts of the ear including outer ear; middle ear chamber; middle ear bones, muscles of the middle ear; ear drum, oval window, cochlea
  10. Describe the relationship between the temporal bone, the labyrinth, the organs of balance and the cochlea of the inner ear
  11. Understand how sound is translated into a neural message and which cranial nerve carries that message
  12. Inventory the different components of static and dynamic balance/movement sensing and how they work including the saccule, utricle and three semi-circular canals
  13.  

Cranial Nerves

  1. Construct overall view of control of all functions of head/neck region--general sensory input, special senses, and motor output to eye, tongue, jaw muscles, face and neck region
  2. Use the groups of cranial  nerves--special sensory nerves, somatic muscle nerves (eye, tongue), neck/rest-of-body nerves; facial and trigeminal nerves--to organize your complete understanding of the head/neck region and its various complex functions
  3. Know the general path of each cranial nerve and the kinds of information--sensory and/or motor--and from what targets that each nerve carries
  4. Appreciate the special role of the Vagus nerve (Cranial Nerve X) as the principal parasympathetic innervation for most of the body.

 

Frolich Retina Left Eye--2008

 


Larry M Frolich, Ph.D.    Miami Dade College  ∞   Wolfson Campus   ∞   Natural Sciences   ∞   Miami, FL  33132  ∞  Office 1504   ∞  (305) 237-7589  ∞  e-mail   Creative Commons License