While the clitoris has been weirdly shrouded in mystery for years, mostly among men who classify men as alphas and betas, it really hasn’t been much of a mystery among normal people. What has been a mystery is how this sensitive cluster of nerves is laid out. A new study is finally shedding some light on how a complex network of nerve endings is nestled in such a small space.

Researchers at Amsterdam University Medical Center have produced the first detailed 3D map of the clitoris’s internal nerve structure. The map reveals a significantly more complex bundle of nerves than had been previously imagined. The team used high-resolution imaging to trace five branching nerve pathways, some of which extended beyond where previous models assumed they ended.

Scientists Just Created the Most Detailed Map of the Clitoris Yet

Study’s lead author, Ju Young Lee, compares the mapping of the clitoral nerve network to that of the penis completed in the late 1990s. It only took the scientific community an additional 30 years to unveil it. That knowledge void was filled with reams of outdated or incomplete anatomical data that often became embedded in medical and scientific knowledge bases like textbooks without much scrutiny. The research team hopes this new evidence will help several medical fields better understand female anatomy.

The immediate effect will be seen in pelvic surgeries, which range from cancer treatments to cosmetic procedures. These surgeries can unintentionally damage these nerves. The findings might also improve reconstructive surgeries for survivors of female genital mutilation. There’s also the broader point of broadening our understanding of a part of a woman’s body that wasn’t even mentioned in several anatomy textbooks until the 20th century, and was often mischaracterized or misunderstood.

The mapping of a body part found on half of the human population isn’t an endpoint; it’s a beginning. The research itself has not yet been peer-reviewed, and a lot more data is going to be needed before we fully understand the clitoris. However, this monumental mapping of its nerve cluster is both long overdue and exactly what research teams around the world needed to eventually fully map and fully understand a normal part of the human body that many in the world of scientific research felt too uneasy to even attempt to understand.