Here's a classic depiction of the somatosensory homunculus. Each part of our bodies are represented in a topographic fashion on the surface of the cortex of our brain. This homunculus is upside down, with his feet at the top. The lips and the hands are relatively large since they have more sensory nerves than most other body parts. The classic view puts the penis just below the foot.
Most of us would have thought it goes elsewhere. In fact, this what more recent findings suggest.
Here's a link to one of the more recent findings Revisiting Somatotopy that puts the penis between the foot and stomach.
But what about the size of the representation of the penis?
Unlike the classic homunculus, this 3D version has a large penis to go along with those big hands. This makes more sense since as we all know, our dicks are very sensitive and surely must have more nerve endings than our elbows.
I also ran across a couple of studies that were investigating whether or not males with premature ejaculation had larger representations of their penis in their brains. These studies were negative and did not support the notion that premature ejaculation was due to overly sensitive cocks. My belief is that these scientists were looking at the wrong group of individuals.
Other research has shown that the sensory maps in our brains are plastic- the representation of body parts or sounds can be enlarged by our experience. This is particularly true if those experiences are highly arousing. Thus it stands to reason that the group we would expect to have larger representations of their penis would be those males who masturbate frequently. Perhaps one of the consequences of frequent masturbation is that our dicks come to occupy a greater part of our brains.
Of course, the discussion so far relates only to males. As we might expect the female homunculus has a clitorus.
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