Cranial chaos: An interactive and practical overview of cranial nerve functions

The pressures from a rapidly evolving technological era have brought about a widespread attention crisis in academia; hence, more non-traditional approaches like game-based pedagogies in medical education have become imperative to increase students' engagement. The Cranial chaos card game was part of an integrated laboratory session on Neuroanatomy structure for first-year medical students, introduced in 2022 and repeated in 2023 to review the sensory, motor, and autonomic functions of the cranial nerves. The students completed an anonymous electronic end-of-course evaluation to assess the ease of use, interactivity, and effectiveness of the cranial nerve game in enhancing their understanding of cranial nerve functions. A total of 202 first-year medical students participated in this study. 90.2% of the 184 respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the cranial nerve card game was easy to use, 91.8% agreed or strongly agreed that the cranial nerve card game was interactive, and 78.3% agreed or strongly agreed that the cranial nerve card game facilitated a more practical understanding of cranial nerve functions. Cranial chaos is an innovative, simple, and inexpensive teaching tool for reviewing cranial nerve functions using real-life scenarios.