The seventh cranial nerve is also known as the facial nerve.  It carries mainly motor fibers to the muscles of facial expression, but it also carries fibers which relay taste, as well as fibers carrying parasympathetic information.  The motor nucleus lies in the lower pons, and the facial nerve exits the lateral aspect of the brainstem, to enter the internal auditory canal.  The parasympathetic component (goes to the lacrimal gland to produce tears) and the taste fibers (receive taste from the anterior two thirds of the tongue, through the chorda tympani nerve) both run in a small nerve adjacent to the facial nerve, known as the nervus intermedius.