Computer Programming Instruction Rapidly “Recycles” Logical Algorithm Representations in Fronto-Parietal Reasoning Systems

We investigated the cognitive/neural “recycling” underlying the acquisition of programming, a culturally-invented skill. Using fMRI, we found neural representations of algorithms (written in plain-English) before 22 programming-naive participants took an introductory programming course. During a semester-end scan, the same neural populations represented programming-code, showing rapid recycling for novel cultural skills.