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Abducens nerve (VI) has a purely motor function and innervates the lateral rectus muscle of the eyeball, generating an abduction movement of the eyeball (hence the name) Nucleus: nucleus of abducens nerve.
Skull: superior orbital fissure.
Damage to the nerve causes inversion of the ipsilateral eyeball towards the nose. This produces diplopia (double vision), increasingly so the more the two visual axes deviate from each other. Looking in the direction of the respective eye reduces the severity of the diplopia.
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© 2008 Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg
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(2008). Abducens Nerve (VI). In: Binder, M.D., Hirokawa, N., Windhorst, U. (eds) Encyclopedia of Neuroscience. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-29678-2_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-29678-2_11
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Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-23735-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-29678-2
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