Nerve · Jaw

Lingual nerve

Nervus lingualis

The nerve of feeling for the front of the tongue and the floor of the mouth. It descends from the posterior trunk of the mandibular nerve, and while still high in the infratemporal fossa it is joined by the chorda tympani from the facial nerve — from that point on it carries two nerves' fibres in one sheath. It then passes between the ramus of the jaw and the medial pterygoid, runs forward immediately beneath the mucosa of the floor of the mouth against the inner plate of the mandible beside the wisdom tooth, loops under the submandibular duct, and enters the tongue. Its own fibres carry touch, pain and temperature from the front two-thirds of the tongue; the borrowed chorda tympani fibres carry taste from the same area and the secretory supply to two of the three large salivary glands.