Although patients with Bell palsy and trigeminal neuralgia occasionally present to primary care physicians, most of the syndromes in this article are somewhat rare in primary care practice. It is important to recognize signs and symptoms of these syndromes so that appropriate management is carried out. Patients may experience sensory and/or motor symptoms of the head and neck due to disorders o...

Background: Glossopharyngeal neuralgia (GPN) is a rare type of cranial nerve rhizopathy that accounts for roughly 1% trigeminal cases and presents as extreme neuralgic pain in the ipsilateral deep throat, tongue base, or ear. Pain usually intense electric shock-like, occurring either without warning triggered by swallowing. The purpose this article to provide comprehensive review diagnosis trea...

Rats lacking chorda tympani nerve (CT) input, a facial nerve branch innervating anterior tongue taste buds, show robust impairments in salt discrimination demonstrating its necessity. Here, we tested the sufficiency of the CT for salt taste discrimination, and whether the remaining input provided by either the greater superficial petrosal nerve (GSP), a facial nerve branch innervating palatal t...

A preparation was developed that allows for the recording of single-unit chemoreceptor activity from mouse carotid body in vitro. An anesthetized mouse was decapitated, and each carotid body was harvested, along with the sinus nerve, glossopharyngeal nerve, and petrosal ganglia. After exposure to collagenase/trypsin, the cleaned complex was transferred to a recording chamber where it was superf...

We investigated the relationship between the membrane potential of frog taste cells in the fungiform papillae and the tonic discharge of parasympathetic efferent fibers in the glossopharyngeal (GP) nerve. When the parasympathetic preganglionic fibers in the GP nerve were kept intact, the mean membrane potential of Ringer-adapted taste cells was -40 mV but decreased to -31 mV after transecting t...

Nine cases of glossopharyngeal neuralgia have been seen in the last 5 years and are reported. They fall into 2 groups, namely otitic and oropharyngeal, according to the initial location of pain. The condition is probably more common than is recognised, largely because there are diagnostic difficulties with the otitic form where the pain radiates widely into the distribution of the trigeminal ne...

We examined pharyngeal nerve courses in paraffin-embedded sagittal sections from 10 human fetuses, at 25-35 weeks of gestation, by using S100 protein immunohistochemical analysis. After diverging from the glossopharyngeal and vagus nerves at the level of the hyoid bone, the pharyngeal nerves entered the constrictor pharyngis medius muscle, then turned upward and ran superiorly and medially thro...

Studies in the last two decades have shown that amiloride-sensitive Na(+) channels play a role in NaCl transduction in rat taste receptors. However, this role is not readily generalized for salt taste transduction in vertebrates, because functional expression of these channels varies across species and also in development in a species. Glossopharyngeal nerve responses to sodium and potassium sa...