This question was posed to me several years ago and I am unwilling to volunteer, even for the sake of knowledge.
Imagine, if you will, that a man’s scrotum was sliced open and one testicle was stretched away from his body to the limits of the attached plumbing. If that testicle were to be placed on a hard surface and struck with a hammer, would the pain be felt radiating from that remote location? Would the mind relate the pain to the original location?
Thank you for your consideration.
Um… even when the testicles are in their proper place, I don’t feel a hurt as being located between my legs. Most of the pain I feel is in my gut - right about where the testicles would be if they were ovaries instead. The sensations I feel that are in the right place are virtually all from the scrotum and not the testicles. So in the example you describe, I fully expect to feel the pain in my gut.
Maybe I’m a freak of nature, but I know other guys who corroborate this experience.
As to the mind’s ability to locate sensations and parts of your body - it does do a lot of interpretation. My Google-fu is failing me, but there’s a trick where you lace your fingers together so that it’s easy to forget which hand is right or left. When you do this, your brain may cause movements or feel sensations in the “wrong” finger. Your brain can use visual cues to reinterpret the pain sensation.
Visceral pain is perceived in the spinal segment at which the visceral afferent nerves enter the spinal cord. So such pain as you describe would be perceived around the level of the sacrum.
I can confirm this, in that I’ve seen patients whose testicles have been traumatized, and they described a deep pelvic pain, even when the 'nads are blowing in the wind.
What would happen with the eye? I know the optic nerve isn’t nearly as long as the vas deferens (having assisted with a feline neutering once O.O), but there’s still a bit of separation there.
Sorry, I didn’t get past the word “open.” shudder
You are sliding down a polished mahogany banister attached to an infinitely long spiral staircase. You go faster and faster. The banister changes suddenly from mahogany to a razor blade. Ouch.
There’s a book called Phantoms in the Brain by Vilayanur Ramachandran that explores this question. Well not this exact question, but the more general one of how sensation is processed by the brain. From what I recall it goes something like this: the brain has a map of your body, every body part has a corresponding area. If the body changes radically, the map is not going to reflect it instantly, so you’ll feel the pain wherever you felt it before. There’s also a trick in the book of how to fool your brain into feeling pain on inanimate objects, but I digress…
For goodness sake, get a life. Is this all you have to occupy your mind?
Thanks for enhancing that song for me forever…
Semi-related (not testicle related) story. A few years ago I received a deep cut along my right palm. As a result, my pinky finger on that hand was almost totally numb for most of a year (happily, sensation eventually returned).
Anyhoo, during that period, when I would press something cold or hot in that hand near where the scar was, my pinky would feel the corresponding sensation, even though the finger itself couldn’t feel temperature and the cold/hot whatever wasn’t in contact with the finger in anycase.
Am I the only one whose mind went to Tom Lehrer’s tune Bright College Days?
Kinda gives new meaning to the lyrics:
Or the alternate version. From a real 9-1-1 call. Spoilered because you probably do not really want to know. You were warned.
Domestic Dispute. Verbal only.
He screams at her.
She grabs him. Gets a secure grip.
He pushes her away.
She does not let go.
Tissue tore.:eek:
I had never before used the words ‘testicular’ and ‘degloving’ in the same sentence for an ambulance dispatch.
Moderator Note
Old Red, if you feel a question is stupid or unimportant, there’s no need for you to reply to it at all. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
My brothers ex girlfriend was fighting with her new boyfriend, and he had her in a headlock. She could not get free and bit down on the closest tissue. He screamed and threw her off, though she did not abate on her dental grip. She said “ptew” and spit out his nipple.
Now for the de-gloving story. One of the pioneer doctors in British Columbia/Alberta wrote in his autobiography(I’d have to dig for the name) how a guy snagged his bag on something(an auger?) and degloved his testes. They were out in the woods, so they incapacitated him with a bunch of booze, and packed him back to town on horse.
He and another doctor decided a man needs his testicles, so they made incisions on the insides of his legs, inserted them, and sewed everything up. He could no longer ride a horse, and (I imagine) was quite uncomfortable in general. He committed suicide later on.
In lighter and more recent events, growing up in the 80s, some kids built a bmx bike ramp next to a pond near our house. One kid launched himself off the ramp into the water, and caught his scrotum on a weld on the handlebars. He required three stitches.. he was really lucky after all.
Thanks everyone!
I have a family friend who, as a child, caught his sack on a nail while climbing down a tree and he actually carried one nut home in the palm of his hand. I did pose this question to him, but he said the only pain he remembered was a burning sensation in his sack. No pain from the gonad itself. To me that makes sense, the injury was to the scrotum.
I think I would agree that the pain would likely be felt low in the gut. It’s been quite a while since my last groin shot but if memory serves the most pain was in my gut. Can’t forget the intense nausea that came with it!!
A phantom testicle?
Oh jeez, another band name.