Anatomy textbooks may need to be rewritten: The penis’s main erogenous zone isn’t where we thought it was
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The most detailed neuroanatomical study of the penis to date has found that its primary erogenous zone is the frenular delta, an area that has long been excluded from anatomy textbooks and surgical training. The triangular-shaped area is located on the ventral side or bottom of the penis, where the head meets the shaft, and can be damaged by circumcision.
“Although this may seem self-evident to any man attuned to the sensations of his penis during sexual activity, our work scientifically validates the existence of a ventral penile anatomical region that serves as a center of sexual sensation,” write the authors of the study, which led Alfonso Cepeda-Emiliani At the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Based on this scientific belief, the frenular delta should be considered the “male G-spot” of the penis, it is said Eric Chung at the University of Queensland in Australia and president-elect of the International Society for Sexual Medicine, who was not involved in the study. “It is one of the most pleasurable places for male sexual arousal.”
Cepeda-Emiliani and colleagues painstakingly mapped sensory nerves in 14 cadavers from donors who died between the ages of 45 and 96. To do this, they cut the penises into fine sections, each a few micrometers thick, and added special dyes that bound to the nerves. The sections were then examined under a microscope.
In anatomy textbooks and online sex guides, the primary site of male genital sensation is generally referred to as the glans penis, i.e. the head of the penis. But Cepeda-Emiliani’s team found evidence that the frenular delta is more sensitive, because it has a higher density of nerve endings.
He also discovered that the frenular delta contained the highest concentration of sensory granules, which are specialized touch receptors formed from bundles of nerve endings. These granules are densely aggregated in groups of up to 17 in the frenular delta, whereas in the glans, they are isolated and dispersed. Sensory corpuscles of the frenular delta include Krause’s corpuscles, which have previously been found to detect tiny vibrations that ripple through the genitals when they rub against the skin and mediate sexual pleasure.
frenular delta was Name By Ken McGrath at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand in 2001. They called it the delta because of its triangular shape, which sits between the V-shaped wings of the glans on the underside of the penis. At its point is the frenulum, a small bridge of skin that connects the foreskin to the penis. McGrath was the first to call the frenular delta the male G-spot, because it is a pleasure zone reminiscent of the female G-spot, but the terminology did not catch on.
The latest study supports the subjective experiences of people for whom stimulation of this so-called G-spot produces “extremely pleasurable and highly specific sensations,” Cepeda-Emiliani and colleagues wrote. The fact that it has attracted little interest in the past “underscores the persistent blindness in sexual medicine and urology”, he says.
Doctors performing circumcision should be educated about the nerve-rich frenular delta because of some of the techniques make an incision across the entire area To remove the skin, they say. This may affect its complex neural network and may reduce sexual sensations if the incision is deep. The entire frenulum is removedInstead of leaving some or all of it in place.
Kesley Pedlar Doctors at Australia’s Port Macquarie Base Hospital say they were not taught about the frenular delta and its specialized nerves during surgical training. “The frenular delta is not mentioned in the most well-known urological surgical anatomy textbooks, even the most up-to-date editions,” she says. Pedlar only performs circumcisions when they are medically necessary, such as when the foreskin is too tight, but says that “now that we know about this area of nerves, it is even more important that these operations be performed only when they are absolutely indicated”.
In the UK and Australia only a small number of male infants are circumcised as an option, but about Half of people undergo this procedure in America. Whether this subsequently alters or reduces sexual sensation is controversial.
A large study in Belgium found that uncircumcised men reported more sexual pleasure by stimulation of their frenular delta compared to circumcised men. On the other hand, an American survey found No difference in orgasm quality Between circumcised and uncircumcised individuals, it has been suggested that the circumcised penis may have ways of compensating for any nerve disruption in the frenular delta area.
The female G-spot has also struggled to gain widespread medical acceptance with some doctors deny its existence. This is because no obvious group of nerves or sensory granules has been found at its approximate location in the cadaveric vagina. But Most of the women surveyed report An erogenous zone at a distance of a few centimeters along the front wall inside the vagina. Ultrasound studies have shown that during sexual arousal, the nerve-rich interior of the clitoris fills and puts pressure on the vaginal wallWhich may explain the sensitive G-spot.
Cepeda-Emiliani and her colleagues say they are now conducting a similarly in-depth study of cadaver vaginas and clitorises.
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