Brain activity while coding differs from processing language or doing maths

Neuroscientists from MIT have discovered that brain activity while coding differs from processing language or doing mathematics.

Coding is often likened to learning a new foreign language—and there are certainly many similarities. To the brain itself, however, it seems to be quite different.

The researchers took fMRI brain scans of young adults taking part in a small coding challenge using both Python and visual programming language ScratchJr to see what parts of their noggins lit up.

Almost no response was seen in the language processing parts of the brain.

Instead, it appears that coding activates the ‘multiple demand network’ of our brains which “is also recruited for complex cognitive tasks such as solving math problems or crossword puzzles.”

Yet when solving maths problems directly, slightly different brain activity patterns emerge.

The multiple demand network is spread throughout the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain. Previous studies have found that math and logic problems dominate the multiple demand regions in the left hemisphere, while tasks involving spatial navigation lean on the right hemisphere more than the left. 

Coding activates both the left and right sides of the multiple demand network (ScratchJr activated the right side slightly more than the left) which counters the belief that coding causes the same brain activity as maths.

So, while coding is closer to maths than language in terms of brain activity, it’s really just its own thing.



Who We Are?

We are agileHorde Technologies, an award-winning mobile app and web app development company in India, USA, Philippines. We develop apps that help businesses engage customers effectively.

Please reach us at info@agilehorde.com or agileHorde Top Mobile App and Web App Development Company

Thanks for reading the blog :)

Source: https://developer-tech.com/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Making open source JavaScript pay

Image
Money isn’t everything to the success of the most popular JavaScript frameworks. Or is it? Looking at the  2019 State of JavaScript report , something stands out: Money apparently can’t buy everything. Or, at least, not every major front-end and back-end programming framework is sponsored by a big company. Sure, we have Google to thank for  Angular , and Facebook gets credit for  React , but what about  Vue.js ? Or Gatsby? Or Next.js? While these (and other) open source projects do seem to suggest a future without Big Corps shoveling Big Money into open source, the reality is a bit more nuanced. For the developers looking to pay their way through open source, however, reality isn’t nuanced at all. For every Vue.js founder  Evan You making $16,000 per month with Patreon contributions , there are thousands of developers struggling to scrape together $16 for the important open source work they’re doing. [  Also on InfoWorld: 15 great alternatives to React, Angular, and Vue  ]
Read more

How artificial intelligence is making the education system more relevant?

Image
Digital learning solutions equipped with artificial intelligence are making revolutionary changes to the way education is imparted in students with varied interests and capabilities. When we think of artificial intelligence, there is a hardwired imagery of gigantic thinking machines working in sci-fi environment. This imagery often comes from the science fiction that we have been watching or reading since childhood. However, deep diving suggests that artificial intelligence is an advanced form of algorithm that empowers machines to emulate human behavior under real life situations. Today, there is no industry untouched by the ripples caused by artificial intelligence. Education sets the foundation of human behavior. Educational ecosystem is formed by knowledge base, teaching skills and experience, learning capability, and evolving teaching methods. Digital learning solutions equipped with artificial intelligence are making revolutionary changes to the way education is im
Read more

Open-source software tracks neural activity in real time

Image
The tool, called CaImAn, replaces the process of manually tracking the location and activity of neurons Tracking the firings of individual neurons is like trying to discern who is saying what in a football stadium full of screaming fans. Until recently, neuroscientists have had to tediously track each neuron by hand. "People spent more time analyzing their data to extract activity traces than actually collecting it," says Dmitri Chklovskii, who leads the neuroscience group at the Center for Computational Biology (CCB) at the Flatiron Institute in New York City. A breakthrough software tool called CaImAn automates this arduous process using a combination of standard computational methods and machine-learning techniques. In a paper published in the journal  eLife  in January, the software's creators demonstrate that CaImAn achieves near-human accuracy in detecting the locations of active neurons based on calcium imaging data. CaImAn (an abbreviation of c
Read more