Communications of the ACM
This Is Your Brain on Code
At least two distinct neural mechanisms mediate computer program comprehension and evaluation, the study suggests.
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Researchers at MIT are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to discover which parts of a programmer's brain are engaged when they evaluate a computer program.
"So many people are dealing with code these days . . . but no one really knows what's going on in their heads when that happens," says Shashank Srikant, a Ph.D. student in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and an author of a study presented at NeurIPS 2022.
Whereas an earlier study by many of the same authors looked at 20 to 30 people to determine which brain systems, on average, are relied upon to comprehend code, the new research looks at the brain activity of individual programmers as they process specific elements of a computer program.
Based on the patterns of brain activity that were observed, the group could tell whether someone was evaluating a piece of code involving a loop or a branch. The researchers could also tell whether the code related to words or mathematical symbols, and whether someone was reading actual code or merely a written description of that code.
From MIT News
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