Many women swear they have one, but a new review of 60 years of sex research shows science still can't definitively find the G-spot.
Researchers have used surveys, imaging scans and biopsies of women, all trying to locate and define the presumably orgasmic area on the vaginal wall known as the G-spot. Based on a review of 96 published studies, an Israeli and American research team came to one conclusion.
"Without a doubt, a discreet anatomic entity called the G-spot does not exist," said Dr. Amichai Kilchevsky, a urology resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, and lead author of the review, published Jan. 12 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Kilchevsky conceded the work is not "1,000 percent conclusive," allowing that other scientists could one day find something his team missed. But they would need new technology to do it, he said.
A half-century quest
The G-spot was named in honor of the late Dr. Ernst Gräfenberg, who in 1950 described a particularly sensitive 1- to 2-centimeter wide area on the vaginal wall. Gräfenberg's description put Western medicine on a quest to define and learn more about the spot, purported to be a few centimeters in from the vaginal opening, on the vaginal wall toward the front of a woman's body.
But Gräfenberg wasn't the first to write about such
an erogenous zone
. The Kamasastra and Jayamangala scripts dating back to 11th century India describe a similar sensitive area, according to the new study.
Modern surveys of women on the subject only confounded the search. From a review of 29 surveys and observational studies, Kilchevsky concluded that a majority of women believe a G-spot actually exists, although some of those women also say they can't locate it.
Other researchers have looked for physical evidence. Biopsies of tissue taken from the vaginal wall often find more nerve endings in the area of the purported G-spot than in other regions of the vaginal wall. But Kilchevsky and his colleagues also found biopsy studies with inconclusive results, and the authors point out that sensitivity in the human body isn't determined by the number of nerve endings alone.
One 2008 study used ultrasound imaging to explore the vaginal wall of women, and found evidence of thicker tissue in the area of the G-spot among women who reported having vaginal orgasms. Women who said they had never had vaginal orgasms had thinner tissue in that area. However, other imaging studies included in Kilchevsky's review couldn't find a conclusive G-spot.
Ultimately, Kilchevsky said he hopes his conclusions support women who worry they can't find the G-spot at home.
Women who can't achieve orgasm
through vaginal penetration don't have anything wrong with them," he said.
Kilchevsky doesn't think women who claim to have a G-spot are crazy either. "What they're likely experiencing is a continuation of the clitoris," he said. G-spot skeptics often point out that the tissue of the clitoris extends into the body, behind it where the G-spot would be located.
