Cranial nerves are the nerves that emerge directly from the brain ( including brain stem). They relay information between the
brain and parts of the body, primarily to and from regions of head and neck. After emerging from the brain, the cranial nerves travel through holes in the skull called foramina, to reach their destination. There are 12 pairs of cranial nerves :
1 ) Olfactory nerve: information about odour to the brain.
2 ) Optic nerve: visual information to the brain.
3 ) Oculomotor nerve, 4 ) Trochlear nerve, 6 ) Abducent nerve and ophthalmic branch of 5 ) trigeminal nerve. All these nerve control muscles of eye movement and provide sensory innervation to the eye and orbit.
5 ) The trigeminal nerve has three branches, ophthalmic, maxillary and mandibular. Maxillary gives sensory innervation to the middle part of face and mandibular controls muscles of chewing and sensation of lower part of the face.
7 ) Facial nerve controls all the muscles of facial expression.
8 ) Vestibulocochlear nerve controls balance and hearing in the temporal bone.
9 ) Glossopharyngeal nerve innervates the upper throat and the back of the tongue.
10 ) Vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve. It is historically cited as pneumogastric nerve as it controls lungs, heart and digestive tract. It controls muscles of voice box or larynx through recurrent laryngeal nerve and superior laryngeal nerve.
11 ) Accessory controls swallowing and movements of head and shoulder.
12 ) Hypoglossal controls muscles of the tongue.
Chords tympani is the branch of Facial nerve which carries taste sensation from taste buds to the brain.
Thus, the correct answer is option D.