Quoted By:
THE FUTURE IS STILL OURS TO SAVE.
Biological consequences of circumcision.
The relevant and spare literature which deals with the (human) prepuce tends to refer (tacitly) to the human foreskin as a mere flap of skin. Anatomically, however, this description is not accurate. The intact human foreskin is richly innervated and contains holocrine glands (e.g., Tyson's glands) (see Sommerova, 1976; Halata and Munger, 1986; and Dail and Evan, 1974 for reviews of the development of sensory nerve endings in the human penis). In terms of surface area, the human foreskin represents approximately 36 percent—more than a third—of the intact penis (Ritter, 1992). As a facet of the man's reproductive apparatus, the foreskin seems to be nontrivial.
Given that "pleasure," "feeling," and "sensation" are all localized within the brain, if circumcision were to affect the neural organization of the brain, then subsequent sexual reactions would also be affected. Studies on the triangulation of the foreskin and the central nervous system and circumcision have yet to be conducted or, at least, are not easily findable. Nonetheless, inferential evidence is available.
Lesions and cortical reorganization.—When Jackson and Diamond (1981) severed sensory nerves from a monkey's hand to its somato-cortex (the area in the brain where "touch" is received), there was no recovery of responsiveness to the denervated skin. This lack of responsiveness to touch from the "deadened" skin was apparently because those nerves which were still intact have a very limited capacity to sprout and to reclaim vacant territory. Florence et al. (1988) noted that nerve regeneration is often incomplete and disorderly and that the remaining area of the somato-cortex becomes reorganized. Large zones of such "silent" cortex persisted over time. Similar reorganizations of the cortex after amputation of a digit or after severing nerves has been reported for cats raccoons and rats