Cranial Nerve seven (CN VII) is also known as the Facial Nerve. Fibers of this nerve exit the skull and course down the jaw (not inside!), with a branch traveling through the middle ear (chorda tympani). The main fibers of the facial nerve enter the parotid gland and immediately diverge into five branches, remembered by this mnemonic: Ten Zombies Broke My Car = Temporal, Zygomatic, Buccal, Mandibular, and Cervical; the facial nerve also gives off an Occipital and a Posterior Auricular branch before entering the parotid gland.

The facial nerve (CN VII) is responsible for providing you with 3 things: facial movements, taste and dampens sounds. The major function of CN VII is to supply motor innervation to the muscles of facial expression, allowing you to squint your eyes, raise your eyebrows, and smile. CN VII also monitors the anterior two-thirds of your tongue for taste, including sour, sweet, bitter, and salty tastes. (The Glossopharyngeal nerve / CN IX supplies taste receptors to the posterior one-third of the tongue, and the Vagus nerve / CN X has a few taste receptors on the epiglottis.) A prevalent mistake among students of human anatomy is to assume that the facial nerve is responsible for facial sensations; this job is reserved for another cranial nerve (Trigeminal / CN V), which just so happens to also control the muscles of mastication. Sound dampening occurs because the facial nerve innervates the stapedius muscle which decreases the vibration of the stapes in the middle ear.

Damage to the facial nerve after the nuclei can cause dry eye, hyperacusis and Bell's Palsy ipsilaterally, taste impairment in the anterior 2/3rds of the tongue and flacid and spastic paralysis of the ipsilateral side of the face, just to name a few symptoms. These can be caused by tumors, hydrocephalis, lacerations and so on. A tumor of the parotid gland can also cause flacid paralysis of the inflicted side. Bell's Palsy can be caused by a viral infection of the facial nerve, although the true causation of Bell's Palsy is infact unknown. Many disorders of the facial nerve can cause weakness, spastic and flacid paralysis of the face while being idiopathic.