Computer Programming Under fMRI
hendrikboom writes:
They observed the brains of computer programmers under fMRI while they were reading code:
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures changes in blood flow throughout the brain, has been used over the past couple of decades for a variety of applications, including "functional anatomy" - a way of determining which brain areas are switched on when a person carries out a particular task. fMRI has been used to look at people's brains while they're doing all sorts of things - working out math problems, learning foreign languages, playing chess, improvising on the piano, doing crossword puzzles, and even watching TV shows like "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
The new paper built on a 2020 study, written by many of the same authors, which used fMRI to monitor the brains of programmers as they "comprehended" small pieces, or snippets, of code. (Comprehension, in this case, means looking at a snippet and correctly determining the result of the computation performed by the snippet.) The 2020 work showed that code comprehension did not consistently activate the language system, brain regions that handle language processing, explains Fedorenko, a brain and cognitive sciences (BCS) professor and a coauthor of the earlier study. "Instead, the multiple demand network - a brain system that is linked to general reasoning and supports domains like mathematical and logical thinking - was strongly active." The current work, which also utilizes MRI scans of programmers, takes "a deeper dive," she says, seeking to obtain more fine-grained information.
[...] The team carried out a second set of experiments, which incorporated machine learning models called neural networks that were specifically trained on computer programs. These models have been successful, in recent years, in helping programmers complete pieces of code. What the group wanted to find out was whether the brain signals seen in their study when participants were examining pieces of code resembled the patterns of activation observed when neural networks analyzed the same piece of code. And the answer they arrived at was a qualified yes.
How close is this to mind-reading?
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