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hendrikboom writes:

They observed the brains of computer programmers under fMRI while they were reading code. [mit.edu]

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.

Apparently different kinds of code produced different patterns in the fMRI results.

How close is this to mind-reading?

Original Submission