>btw, most cranial nerves have either ipsilateral or bilateral
>representation.
this neural topology occurs because the motion problem, with respect to
the head, differs from that of the body...
if the medulary brainstem is hemisceted laterally, there will be a loss
of pain and temperature sensation on the same side of the face as the
lesion, but on the opposite side of the body...
...now think... if one is walking in the woods at night, and something
pokes one in the face, how should one's head move? ...away from the
poking thing... but if something pokes one in a leg, it's very-helpful
in organizing one's avoidance behavior if one's head orients toward the
enviornmental source of the noxious stimulation... (the practical joke
which has one duped into looking at some point on one's body, only to
run into a (hopefully, gentle) finger to the face "hinges" upon the
function that's being discussed...
...this neural topology is as it is so that the sensory innervation will
be alligned with the totally-inhibitory outputs of the cerebellum (which
arise from the cerebellar purkinje cells), and allows the
infinitely-large avoidance problem to be resolved in millisecond time
frame by "simply" minimizing the topologically-distributed ratios of
excitation to inhibition (TD E/I) involved...
...decussation occurs so that this one information-processing dynamic
will be optimized...
