the authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest .
 in this perspective we provide an example for the limits of reverse engineering in neuroscience . 
 we demonstrate that application of reverse engineering to the study of the design principle of a functional neuro - system with a known mechanism , may result in a perfectly valid but wrong induction of the system 's design principle . if in the very simple setup we bring here ( static environment , primitive task and practically unlimited access to every piece of relevant information ) , it is difficult to induce a design principle , what are our chances of exposing biological design principles when more realistic conditions are examined ? 
 implications to the way we do biology are discussed . 
Conflict of Interest Statement