# Talk:Cranial nerves

Cranial nerves do not have a central and peripheral course.  Once in the brain, they are no longer cranial nerves.  The nerves have intracranial and extrancranial courses.  I am changing the text accordingly.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Anatomyczar (talk • contribs) 13:34, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Damage to the accessory nerve causes ipsilateral, not contralateral, weakness to the trapezius.  Similarly, damage to the ipsilateral nerve, if high, will definitely cause paralysis of the sternocleidomastoid as well.  What is currently written is incorrect.

In the sections under 2 Function, the function of each nerve is discussed largely in terms of known pathologies. Is this how anatomical function is normally or primarily described? Is the emphasis on pathology a feature of medical literature as opposed to literature for a general audience? 
I suspect that the knowledge of cranial nerve function might proceed largely from the knowledge of adverse physical conditions   observed consistently in conjunction with specific cranial nerve damage. (In other words, as regards "function," it may be more truthful to say, "we know what functions are impaired when this particular nerve is damaged," rather than describe the same nerve as positively "having" such functions.) Even so, as a general reader, I myself did expect to find information about normative "function" as such and was surprised to find mostly information characterizing "malfunction." 
Please keep in mind that I am not a medical expert, and please do pardon my ignorance if the reason for the focus on pathology is obvious or generally understood. --Zmvictor (talk) 02:57, 2 January 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zmvictor (talk • contribs) 02:52, 2 January 2020 (UTC) 

@Zmvictor you make an excellent point and I very much agree this distinction between normal and abnormal is important. For this reason in most articles "Clinical significance" and "Function" are split quite clearly. In this article we use a slightly different structure. The main reason for that was otherwise we have two lists of the tweleve nerves - one in function and one in clinical significance, which ended up being messy. We decided it might be more useful to have the effect of damage to each of the twelve nerves next to its function, and an overall coverage of sources of damage in the 'clincial significance' section. I see that the text has deteriorated a little bit so this distinction has been lost over time. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:59, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Ergh. I think this article will need more work than I thought. --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:11, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
@Zmvictor  Done I have made quite a lot of edits to the article. It's not perfect but I hope this is an improvement. Let me know what you think.--Tom (LT) (talk) 06:02, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
@Tom (LT) Just a note to say I reread the article and very much appreciated your emendations as well as the expanded text and additional figures. I found the subsections under Function clear and easy to follow. As a reader, I quickly caught on to the pattern (description of normative function followed by description of abnormal function due to damage), which helped me organize the information mentally as I was reading.-- Zmvictor (talk) 08:23, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks I appreciate your positive reply :). Let me know (probably via my talk page is easiest) if you find any other articles that are particularly hard to understand, happy to have a look and try and improve them too. Cheers --Tom (LT) (talk) 07:44, 14 January 2020 (UTC)