Researcher study which parts of your brain are engaged when a person is accessing a computer program. Over the past few decades, "functional anatomy"--a method of identifying which brain areas are activated while a person does a specific task--has been one of the many applications of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which analyzes changes in blood flow throughout the brain. People's brains have been observed using fMRI while engaging in a variety of activities, including solving math problems, picking up new languages, playing chess, improvising on the piano, doing crossword puzzles, and even watching comedy. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT Ph.D. "That's definitely something to look into. These days, so many individuals read, write, create, and debug code, yet nobody really understands what's happening in their thoughts at the same time."

In some ways, learning to program a computer is similar to learning a new language. It requires learning new symbols and terms, which must be organized correctly to instruct the computer what to do. The computer code must also be clear enough that other programmers can read and understand it. In spite of those similarities, MIT neuroscientists have found that reading computer code does not activate the regions of the brain that are involved in language processing. Instead, it activates a distributed network called the multiple demand network, which is also recruited for complex cognitive tasks such as solving math problems or crossword puzzles.