Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor? (2017)
Testing analytical methods of a field against engineered artefacts is a good idea but there is a fatal flaw here; devices that do a fetch-decode-execute-retire loop against a register file and a memory bus have perversely little in common with what neurobiology is concerned with. A more appropriate artefact would be a CPU <i>and its memory</i> (where NOP'ing out code or flipping flags corresponds to "lesioning"), or even better, an FPGA design (where different functions work in parallel in different locations on the silicon, much like brains).<p>That the tools of neuroscience choke on a 6502 is as much of an indictment of the former as my inability to fly helicopters is an indictment of my fixed-wing airmanship; not coping well with notoriously perverse edge cases outside your domain of expertise isn't inherently a sign of failure (it's not a licence to stop improving, of course). Brains and 6502s are quite literally entirely different kinds of computing, much like designing for FPGA is weird and different from writing x86 assembly or C.<p>A far more interesting question is "could a neuroscientist understand an FPGA?".