Herculano-Houzel: The way that people could count neurons or any other type of cells in brains was, and still is, stereology which essentially amounts to taking whole brains, slicing them up perfectly, and then sub-sampling a few sections under the microscope. Narration: Why did everyone think there were that many neurons in the brain?
Who gives a reference for that anymore, right? You open textbooks and it's right there, so you just take it for the truth. It's as good a truth as genes are made of DNA. You can write it in the opening paragraph of your review papers without ever bothering to give a reference. Herculano-Houzel: Oh yeah, the 100 billion neurons in the human brain, that's the number that appears in major text books, on the internet. Narration: Were you originally taught that the brain had over 100 billion neurons? I'm an associate professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Herculano-Houzel: I’m Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Then, one scientist sat down to actually test this number.
For decades, this number was repeated over and over. Narration: It was once widely believed that the human brain had over 100 billion neurons, and 10 times as many glia cells.
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