Path
The lingual nerve lies at first beneath the lateral pterygoid muscle, medial to and in front of the inferior alveolar nerve, and is occasionally joined to this nerve by a branch which may cross the internal maxillary artery.
The chorda tympani (a branch of the facial nerve, CN VII) joins it at an acute angle here, carrying taste fibers from the anterior two thirds of the tongue and parasympathetic fibers to the submandibular ganglion.
The nerve then passes between the medial pterygoid muscle and the ramus of the mandible, and crosses obliquely to the side of the tongue over the constrictor pharyngis superior and styloglossus, and then between the hyoglossus and deep part of the submandibular gland; it finally runs from laterally to medially inferiorly crossing the duct of the submandibular gland, and along the tongue to its tip becoming the sublingual nerve, lying immediately beneath the mucous membrane.
Read more about this topic: Lingual Nerve
Famous quotes containing the word path:
“They take abuse
with smiles,
their hardship
with great ceremony,
their quarrels
with tears:
This is the path of good women.”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“Today brings the sad, glad tidings that Mrs. Abraham Lincoln has passed from that darkness which had fallen upon her path through this life, out into the light and joy of that life toward which her vision has so long been strained.
Modern education is lethal to children.... We stuff them with mathematics, we pummel them with science, and we use them up before their time.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“The path of social advancement is, and must be, strewn with broken friendships.”
—H.G. (Herbert George)