11–20 of 189 posts
Dumb question, why do “sensitive” spots on the body need more nerves? Couldn’t you just have the normal touch-sensing nerves and map signals from specific spots on the body to stronger/pleasurable qualia in the brain?
[0]: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.712572v1...
[flagged]
Dumb question, why do “sensitive” spots on the body need more nerves? Couldn’t you just have the normal touch-sensing nerves and map signals from specific spots on the body to stronger/pleasurable qualia in the brain?
Dumb question, why do “sensitive” spots on the body need more nerves? Couldn’t you just have the normal touch-sensing nerves and map signals from specific spots on the body to stronger/pleasurable qualia in the brain?
I can't tell why other areas may have needed higher spatial resolution; maybe it was evolutionary important in the past, and remains today. Or maybe just adding more nerves due to a random mutation correlated with better reproductive outcomes due to a stronger signal, or higher sensitivity, so more nerves are present for no other reason.
Dumb question, why do “sensitive” spots on the body need more nerves? Couldn’t you just have the normal touch-sensing nerves and map signals from specific spots on the body to stronger/pleasurable qualia in the brain?
Having more independent samples helps filter out noise. If you had individual sensory neurons with outsized influence, then misfiring of such neurons would also have outsized influence.
This seemed surprising, as it hews too close to an annoying meme in feminism and history generally, that people in prior eras were idiots. And it turns out to be wrong. The clitoris was in Gray's Anatomy until 1947, when it was removed by the editor Charles Goss for the 25th edition. See https://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/cliteracy/embed... Indeed, the clitoris had been depicted in Classical medical books.
Why it was removed--and stayed removed for nearly 50 years--would make for an interesting story about mid-century culture, if not for a cynical throwaway comment, though it seems nobody knows Goss' actual motivations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having more independent samples helps filter out noise. If you had individual sensory neurons with outsized influence, then misfiring of such neurons would also have outsized influence.
This makes a lot of sense, thx!
Ironic, from reading the article it actually takes a while to find the research... https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.712572v1 >>> PDF with the images https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.712572v1...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This makes a lot of sense, thx!
Sounds plausible at least, but I think the question isn't necessarily making a valid assumption. Why do men have to have nipples? Why is our retina installed backwards? Why do sinuses drain upwards? It's just a path evolution took, it doesn't jump to some optimal design.