![]() But her skepticism was strong, and she was interested in counting brain cells: Had anyone counted them in a reliable way? At that time, she was working at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and didn’t consider herself a neuroanatomist, didn’t have a lab, and didn’t have research funding. After an extensive search through the scientific literature, she wasn’t able to find a single source supporting the claim (Herculano-Houzel 2016). No one was able to point her to the original source. ![]() In 2003, Suzanna Herculano Houzel (neuroanatomist from the Comparative Neuroanatomy Lab at Vanderbilt University) became curious about where the number came from and began to question senior neuroscientists. In addition to academia’s dissemination of the supposed fact, popular media embraced and promoted the 100 billion neuron idea. Even the general public knew that the human brain consists of 100 billion neurons. I just assumed it was common knowledge and must be supported by a large body of data. I never saw a citation of an original source to support the claim, nor did I ever hear anyone question whether or not there was evidence to support it. This number was reported in scholarly journals, textbooks, and in college lectures. When I was an undergraduate in graduate school, I learned the human brain consists of 100 billion neurons (Kolb and Whishaw 2009).
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