Sensory homunculus

[JellySlice]

I was discussing the sense of touch with dd, and Googled sensory homunulus to show her, because an image is worth a thousand words.

And then I realised that the sensory homunculus is always male. I have never seen a sensory homunculus of a female body. Adding female to the search term just brings up male sensory homunculi with lipstick and nail varnish, or sexualised cartoonish female images.

It won't take a thousand words to explain its absence, but surely someone, somewhere, must have created a sensory image of the female body?

I'd have thought that "Femuncula" would be more correct, though I'm no Latin scholar.

I would like to see the mind/imagination being represented as well.
Not sure about the baldness though.

This is about physical sensation, not mind or imagination. Hair has no neural connection s that allows it to sense, hence 'baldness'.

Oh I see, the physical sensations mapped according to sensory signals.
I wonder if this includes hairs standing on end when stimulated, perhaps where there is a sense of impending danger.

The New Scientist published an article on this topic.

www.newscientist.com/article/dn20770-sex-on-the-brain-what-turns-women-on-mapped-out/amp/

The homunculus is generally shown wrapped around the cerebral cortex.
Here is the female one from the new scientist article.



Here

Is that image truly representative of the female body? Or have they taken the standard default-male image and added the words for female sex organs to the area generally represented as a penis?

I understand the representation of the male homunculnus but I am puzzled why a female is not readily imagined.

I keep thinking of Sheela na gigs.

If you look at Gwynfluff's link, you'll see that it's the classic men-as-default. The original research was done on men.

The new scientist article from 2011 reports research on women taken from a brain imaging study.

The paper linked on the last page says only the breasts and genitals were actually studied in women and the gaps were filled in with research done on the male default.

Never thought of a Sheela-Na-Gig that way before, it works pretty well as a femunculus!

There is a reason why in open places, hetrosexual and bi-sexual women do not fear lesbian women as we are told we must/should do (by men wanting and needing to invade women's spaces):

We understand intimately our collective bodies.

We are not required to understand them from a mans/Male point of view.

Studies are redundant. Or ineffective.

This isn't about understanding our bodies from a male POV. This is about stepping away from the male POV entirely. The sensory homunculus is a quantitative understanding of the male body. The male POV is that it is unnecessary to have this quantitative understanding of the female body.

People will call me a massive homuncophobe but I could never fancy someone with hands and feet like that.

An old study here that suggests female biology has falsely been led by male stereotypes.
It blew my mind at the time.

www.discovermagazine.com/mind/new-theory-on-how-the-aggressive-egg-attracts-sperm

Sorry that's not the actual article, I will need to look for it later.

It's called The Aggressive Egg by Emily Martin

Hi
I make Homunculus for a living and they are not easy to create due the diameter of the arms and the size of the hands (weight). www.sharonpricejames.com

When you ask about creating a female homunculus that is not something that can be done without great investment.
A Sensory Homunculus is made to scientifically proven ratios. The more richly innervated the cortex the larger the proportion of the body appropriated to that area of cortex. We therefore cannot simply guess at this or remove the penis and affix some boobs.
Unless the figure made is created to scientifically proven ratios then it is not a Sensory Homunculus and therefore can only be sold as Sensory Homunculus style figure.

I have spent thousands of pounds working with neurologists, I supply Universities and museums all over the world and I can say that I am in the end process of creating a female figure. This has been undertaken with 2 professors from both UCLA and McGill University.
In addition both our Homunculus as well as the 2 in London include a fudge, that is an inconsistency in the ratio, this way we protect against people just copying ours.

So I hope this helps a little, our female Homunculus should be ready for Christmas. I always enjoy talking about my little men and so you can see why its just not possible to quickly make one.

Finally one of the distasteful things about the research is that much of it is undertaken on cadavers. So we have to wait for subjects to study........Ive asked for volunteers but people seem reluctant.

Sharon I’m delighted you’re filling the gap in the market at last!
I’m puzzled by the artist’s impression shown upthread though. How on earth are the breasts shown as bigger than the clitoris? The latter has over 7,000 nerve endings and should surely be the largest item on the whole homunculus?

Thank you Sharon! That is great news.

Fascinating!

Interesting! I read some time ago that one of the reasons for the underestimation of the clitoris in the past was that what information had been obtained was done so from the cadavers of elderly women with atrophy. (That and not looking properly!)

Great to hear , Sharon. Will be interested to see the female version.

This is so interesting, I'd never heard of it before, will have to go read some more about it. It's so disappointing just how many areas of science have neglected to even try to think about women

It's so disappointing just how many areas of science have neglected to even try to think about women

Caroline Criado-Perez's book Invisible Women is excellent on this topic.

Finally one of the distasteful things about the research is that much of it is undertaken on cadavers. So we have to wait for subjects to study........Ive asked for volunteers but people seem reluctant.

@Sharon29201 Can you say more about this? Do you mean volunteers for a brain imaging study? Are you working with a university on this? I'd happily volunteer if I am in the right location (unlikely.)