Your Penis Has A "G-Spot", And Even The Experts Didn't Know It Was There

But a new study has solved a puzzle many of us might not have even known existed. The main erogenous zone of the penis, it turns out, is a place so obscure that even experts in the field often aren’t aware of its importance: the frenular delta.

The frenular what?

Located on the underside of the penis, right where the shaft meets the head, the frenular delta – you may know it as the area around your “banjo string” – just can’t help but be extraordinarily sensitive. It’s “richly innervated by partially overlapping perineal and dorsal nerve branches”, the new paper explains, with “heightened concentrations of nerve bundles and corpuscular receptors”. 

In other words: there’s just a whole lot of very sensitive, very densely clustered nerve endings there – and that makes for “intensely pleasurable and highly specialized sensations”, the paper notes.

“Although this may seem self-evident to anyone attuned to the sensations of their penis during sexual activity, our work scientifically validates the existence of a ventral penile anatomical region that serves as a center of sexual sensation,” the authors write. “In essence, the presence of a sensory center in the penis, akin to a ‘G-spot,’ emerges as a neuroanatomical reality”.

How did they figure that out?

If you’re hoping to enroll yourself in a genital-pleasure study like this, we have bad news: not only were the penises used in this investigation taken from dead people, but they were also, well, taken from dead people. 

Some were from fetuses aged between 8-24 weeks. These were either from elective terminations or spontaneous abortions, and in cases where they had congenital conditions these were unrelated to their genitalia. The rest, another 14 on top of the 30 fetuses, were adults aged between 45 and 96, their bodies donated to science after their death. 

Once removed, the penises were preserved – apart from three of the adults’, which were preserved and then removed – and sliced up like a pepperoni. Those slices, each only a few micrometers thick, or about half the width of a single red blood cell, were then examined under the microscope to see how nerve endings were placed.

Why the two age groups?

The team wasn't only interested in exactly where the nerves are in a penis, they also wanted to see how they get there. This was more than just an interesting side quest: until now, the development of the penile nervous system was a black box, even to the experts. 

As it turns out, the penis is kind of blah for the first 16 weeks. While the dorsal nerve, which branches out along the top of the shaft, was “highly developed” at just 8 weeks, most of the rest of the sensory receptors were absent in basically all specimens at 16 weeks. It's only past that age that sensory receptors start to become detectable, the team discovered.

The new study isn’t a one-and-done explanation of the process (the authors “invit[e] further exploration of axonal guidance strategies, navigation through intermediate and final targets, molecular gradients of guidance cues, and axonal progressive and regressive events”), but it does nevertheless provide a much-needed foundation for understanding it.

Of course, ideally, the study would go further – what happens developmentally after birth, for example; how do things change during puberty? But when your work relies on cadavers, actively recruiting new subjects can be… ethically problematic. Suffice it to say: the researchers know there’s a gap, and they’re hoping to fix it. 

What about the adults?

If you’ve ever read an anatomy textbook or sex guide, you may have been greeted with the news that the glans – the head – is the most sensitive part of the penis. That’s not totally unfounded: there are certainly a whole bunch of sensory receptors in the glans, sprinkled generously throughout its various tissues. 

But “these corpuscles consistently appear in isolation rather than forming clusters,” explain the study authors. In contrast, the frenular delta contains them in dense groups of up to 17 at a time – a sensory bomb that justifies calling it the “male G-spot” of the penis, Eric Chung, a urologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, told New Scientist last week. 

“It is one of the most pleasurable spots for male sexual stimulation,” Chung, who was not involved in the study, confirmed.

Wait – isn’t that where… you know… circumcision happens?

Yep. There are actually a few ways to perform a circumcision, where the foreskin is surgically removed from the penis, and some of them get pretty close to the frenulum. The most common procedure for adults seems to cut straight through it, in fact. A jog or a slip, a slightly unusual anatomy or an older patient, and it could mean a significant loss of sensation in that most prized of appendages.

Compounding this, of course, is the fact that even experts, thus far, are potentially unaware of the particular importance of the frenular delta. The area “is not mentioned in the most well-regarded urological surgical anatomy textbooks,” Kesley Pedler, a urologist at Port Macquarie Base Hospital in Australia, told New Scientist. “Even in the most up-to-date editions.”

Of course, there are many reasons to be cautious about circumcision, and – while we’re not going to wade into that particular controversy here – the researchers explicitly agree that “the prepuce is a specialized, specific erogenous tissue [and] surgical excision should be restricted to lesions that are unresponsive to medical therapy.”

In practice, circumcisions can sometimes go even further. If requested, a doctor may remove the frenulum as well; some places also offer penile neurotomies, an experimental and non-recommended procedure with what the researchers call “an alarming lack of robust scientific evidence, ethical regulations”. In this, some of the nerves in the penis are cut or cauterized, and it can come with some really gnarly side effects.

“Permanent erogenous sensation loss, erectile dysfunction, and profound psychological sequelae” have been reported, the researchers write. So have “psychotic episodes”, they add, “likely stemming from the deep neural and hedonic impact of compromising frenular delta innervation, a structure uniquely adapted for transmitting pleasurable sensations tied to sexual reward and satisfaction.”

Circumcision, too, has sometimes been linked with reduced sexual pleasure – though that one is more controversial. But while unusual in most places, the procedure is much more common in the US. If it does indeed alter or reduce sensation in the penis, then tens of millions of men in the country could be affected and not even know it.

Okay… so what about the ladies?

Good news: if you don’t have a penis, you haven’t been forgotten. The researchers’ next project is to recreate the investigation for vulvas and clitorises – an anatomy set that has traditionally been so ignored or rejected by medical science that many people don’t even know that the whole thing isn’t one big “vagina”.

“Although significant progress has been made in elucidating penile neuroanatomy, vulvar neuroanatomy and morphology remain grossly underexplored,” admit the researchers, “leaving substantial gaps in our understanding of their role in sexual function and experience.”

“Studies of vulvar and clitoral sexual neuroanatomy are underway in our laboratory, aiming to address the long-standing imbalance in research,” they write. “We seek to […] shed light on what has been overlooked, misunderstood, or wilfully ignored.” Indeed, they aren't alone in this, as research by a separate team has just been released detailing the full neuroanatomy of the clitoris for the first time.

The study is published in the journal Andrology.