Brains on Code: Towards a Neuroscientific Foundation of Program Comprehension

Speaker:  Sven Apel – Saarbrücken, Germany
Topic(s):  Software Engineering and Programming

Abstract

Research on program comprehension has a fundamental limitation: program comprehension is a cognitive process that cannot be directly observed, which leaves considerable room for misinterpretation, uncertainty, and confounders. In project Brains On Code, we are developing a neuroscientific foundation of program comprehension. Instead of merely observing whether there is a difference regarding program comprehension (e.g., between two programming methods), we aim at precisely and reliably determining the key factors that cause the difference. This is especially challenging as humans are the subjects of study, and inter-personal variance and other confounding factors obfuscate the results. The key idea of Brains On Code is to leverage established methods from cognitive neuroscience to obtain insights into the underlying processes and influential factors of program comprehension. Brains On Code pursues a multimodal approach that integrates different neuro-physiological measures as well as a cognitive computational modeling approach to establish the theoretical foundation. This way, Brains On Code lays the foundations of measuring and modeling program comprehension and offers substantial feedback for programming methodology, language design, and education. With Brains On Code, addressing longstanding foundational questions such as “How can we reliably measure program comprehension?”, “What makes a program hard to understand?”, and “What skills should programmers have?” comes into reach. Brains On Code does not only help answer these questions, but also provides an outline for applying the methodology beyond program code (models, specifications, requirements, etc.).

About this Lecture

Number of Slides:  60 - 90
Duration:  n/a minutes
Languages Available:  English
Last Updated:  18/03/2026

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