Synonyms
Introduction
The cochlear nerve is one of the three divisions of the vestibulocochlear nerve and carries all auditory information from the cochlea’s organ of Corti to the brain. The cochlear nerve originates at the cochlea, traverses the internal auditory canal (IAC), travels to the cerebellopontine angle, and synapses at the cochlear nucleus in the pons. The entire afferent auditory pathway is composed of four sequential synapses from the cochlea to the auditory cortex (Anson et al. 1981), and the auditory nerve is the first segment.
The nerve has approximately 31,400 myelinated axons in persons with normal or near normal hearing (Rasmussen 1940; Spoendlin et al. 1989). Each axon connects to an individual cell body in the spiral ganglion. The amount of fibers may differ between the right and left side of an individual by as many as 5,000. This number does not stay constant during normal aging. Schuknecht theorized that the neurons decrease by as many as 2,100...
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Pusz, M., Littlefield, P. (2013). Cochlear Nerve, Anatomy. In: Kountakis, S.E. (eds) Encyclopedia of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23499-6_540
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23499-6_540
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