That, uhh, sounds nice and all, but I don’t believe it. This doesn’t even make sense on the face of it: Why does removing one body part lead to phantom pain signals, but removing another body part lead to improved sensation? Do people who lose fingers develop better sensation in their remaining fingers to compensate? Wouldn’t it stand to reason then that some men would get phantom foreskin pain?
Comment on type shit
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 1 day agoThe brain is weird and whacky the way it works. It has a sort of auto-gain. The less nerve stimulus over time leads to a higher sensitivity of remaining nerves. Often when people lose a limb, they still feel pain in it - the lack of nerve signals causes the remaining nerve endings to be amplified so much that despite not even having pain receptors, the noise signals are perceived as pain. So a human growing up with a cut forskin simply adapts and the brain perceives more sensitivity from the other nerves to produce the same levels of sensation.
SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 1 day ago
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
There’s plenty of signals coming from the nerve bundles in the area. Phantom pain seems to need larger sets of nerve bundles removed/unstimulated. Is s not fully understood, but that seems to be how it works. People who lose fingers often do get increased sensitivity on other fingers and they can also get phantom pain.
SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 22 hours ago
Again, I have to express doubt. I understand brain plasticity, and why some people can read Braille, while I cannot. (I haven’t put in the work.) Sensory receptors are specific to certain functions, though, and one type cannot assume the function of another if it’s not present. Nobody can read Braille on their lower back, because it lacks fine-touch receptors.
I did read a study which made a good point about perceived intensity of sensation not correlating with number of sensory receptors. I can understand why circumcision may not affect many men. However, I stand by my statement that you cannot perceive sensation from receptors that are gone. WRT the original comment, there are some men who do experience lowered or absent sexual sensation due to circumcision. Perhaps their brains are attuned to those receptors that are gone. Also, later in life sensory perception of all kinds naturally begins to fade, and the number of missing receptors become more evident.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
I think the mechanism in question is more on the brain side. Where certain sets of nerves are processed, if some are missing that area of brain simply adjusts the input strength of others. I suspect adult amputation is different from amputation of a newborn since the brain elasticity is so different. But all we can do it make educated guesses anyway since we can’t do controlled experiments. Studies involving watching brain activity can only go so far to really reflect experience. So we can’t know. I’m just pointing out that the common sense approach you indicated isn’t matched by some clear data. So it’s not cut and dry. It could even be that men circumcised at birth experience more sexual pleasure.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 4 hours ago
That is just false. You sound like someone who isn’t circumcised.
Without the foreskin intact, the glans is subject to friction throughout the day as it’s in contact with the inside of one’s clothes. This reduces sensitivity over time and builds thicker, drier, and rougher layers of skin. Whereas the glans of an uncircumcised penis is basically a mucus membrane, on a circumcised penis it’s more like the skin of a knuckle, but thicker.