De(v)bugging the Brain

Debugging is a commonly used term in computer science to describe processes such as detecting, localizing and resolving glitches in the computer program. Historically, the term is attributed to Grace Murray Hopper, an early computer scientist who found an actual moth in one of the first electromechanical computers in 1947. Since then, minor computer problems are “officially” called bugs. Although debugging is still an inherent segment of computer science, and metaphors coming from that field have always been inspiring for researchers in cognitive science, debugging has not become a metaphor like other terms, such as encoding, control, search, retrieval, etc. have. Scientists are looking at the network properties of the brain, and memory retrieval processes of the mind, but no one is looking for debugging procedures in the mind/brain. We suggest that the concept might be particularly useful for the field of developmental neuroscience. Taking the examples of reverse learning, cortical pruning and developmental unlearning, we argue that these might be fine cases of developmental debugging, or, in other words, de(v)bugging. We also propose that the debugging framework might one day reveal the functional anatomy of natural debugging along with its developmental relevance.