ANHB3324 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Superior Salivary Nucleus, Geniculate Ganglion, Common Facial Vein
LECTURE EIGHT: The Face and Facial Nerve
Functions of the Face:
• Sensation → rich nerve supply → touch
• Expression → skin colour and complex muscles → blush, smile
• Protection of eye → muscles
• Food gathering → muscles of lips
Sensations of the Face:
• Facial skin is acutely sensitive and richly innervated by nerves
• Touch → skin and hairs
• Temperature → heat loss, blushing and sweating
• Pain → all qualities
• Pressure → deeper structures
• Not all nerves of the face are sensory, but innervation is complex
Embryology:
• Facial development starts in the 4th week
• Driven by brain development
• Facial skeleton is a later development → starts at sides of embryo and
fuse at midline
• Many changes take place between 5 and 7 weeks
Skin Qualities:
• Thin
• Hairy → variable between males and females
• Sensitive in the extreme → huge distorted representation in the sensory
cortex
• Blood supply and drainage is very rich
• Muscles insert into the skin
Muscles of Facial Expression:
• Skeletal muscle
• Attach mostly to skin
• Derived from pharyngeal arch 2
• Supplied by facial nerve (CN VII)
• Nerve supply is special visceral motor (SVM)
• Functional sphincters and dilators or orifices
• Buccinator
o Makes up cheeks and lips
o Not supplied by buccal nerve
o Origin
▪ Pterygo-mandibular raphe
▪ Alveolus of maxilla and mandible
o Attachment → incisivus superior and inferior
• Platysma → muscle of pharyngeal arch origin that extend down into
somite territory
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