computer app analyses neural network like an MRI scanner

An example of an analogy used in science journalism,

"What this research team are doing is almost like using computer applications that act a bit like an MRI scanner to analyse the so-called neural network, you know, the brain-like computing structure that underlies these chat-bots. So they said 'let's see which bits light up when we do something related to language'. … it turns out only about 1% of them are. The scientists thought, 'aha, well let's see what happens if we deactivate these, they call it ablation, which sounds very sci-fi, so they ablate these, the bits that had been lighting up, just to see what they do, and sure enough the models really, they carry on working, but they just spit out a whole load of gobbledygook."

[VG: "They can't construct language"]

'Exactly they loose their ability to construct and to process language."

Gareth Mitchell (Imperial College London) was talking to presenter Victoria Gill on an episode ('Will the Hole in the Ozone Layer Close?') of BBC Inside Science.

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Many examples of science analogies are listed in 'Creative comparisons: Making science familiar through language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.

Whether or not 'ablation' "sounds very sci-fi", this seems to be a metaphor where the researchers excised some of the nodes of the neural net like a surgeon ablating brain tissue.