Since we gave start to our fight to show to Brazil and to the world that the great primates are our closest relatives, brothers for us, cousins for other people, something appeared to make things more difficult. The obstacles were created by some scientists, who affirmed that the human being was different and special because his brain was special.

This myth has just been broke by Brazilian scientists. A paper recently published in "Journal of Comparative Neurology" and signed by Roberto Lent, Suzana Herculano-Houzel and other 7 authors determined, precisely, that the human brain has 86 billions of neurons, and not 1000 billions, as it used to be said. Besides, the study shows that human brain has nothing of different when compared to the brains of other great primates.

This group of scientists has been working for some years in the evaluation of several mammal brains. And recently, with the collaboration of a team from USP Brains Bank, they managed to have access to human brains. A pioneer technique developed by the group in the lab – to dissolve the brain cells in a detergent, getting to a homogenous liquid – allowed a more precise counting of the number of neurons. It also determined that Gliais cells, a part of the brain, count 84 billions, and no 10 billions for each neuron, as it was supposed.
 
In an article published in Folha de São Paulo on March 1st (Caderno Mais), Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel explained the research and dedicated the breakthrough to Charles Darwin, who, 150 years ago, had a vision of this discovery when he linked all primates to a common ancestor.