Cranial and Spinal Nerves

I survived last weeks quiz, I'm glad to report. But that doesn't mean they don't still scare me to death. There is so much information. I was thankful that on Tuesday we mostly reviewed material. We talked again about the anatomy of the brain, lobes and functions, arterial blood flow, the limbic system and CSF circulation. Thursday was a new topic and a new Prof. Mr Haskell. Mr Haskell had the task of teaching about the Cranial and Spinal nerves. A whole lot of info packed in one lecture. We started learning that the spinal cord and CSF (dorsal cavity) is called the Conus medullaies, this separates into the Cauda equina which further branches off in the sacral area of Filium equina. Confused yet? Yeah, that's just the beginning. Looking at a cross section of the spinal cord we can see it's shaped like a white circle with an gray "H" inside. The area of the spinal cord that is white appears so because it's myelinated and the gray mater is unmyelinated and appears darker. The dorsal root is sensory as the ventral root is motor. The white commisure are tracts that are coming from the brain (like a highway). The horns have three areas, the posterior, lateral and anterior. The lateral gray horn is only found in the thoracic region and is where sympathetic nerves exit the spinal cord.
We learned that some nerves are weaved together in a plexus and that they branch off in many areas. The lumbar-sacral region is not as mingling or complex as the brachial plexus. We referred to a lot of diagrams in the text and the PowerPoint to see how the nerves are situated in and throughout the human body. We highlighted the 12 cranial nerves and looked at their points on entrance/exit in the human skull. I am still learning what all the nerves do and the labeling of the skull. There is another quiz on Tuesday so I still have to spend a lot of time learning the brain/blood flow and nerves.