Jonathan Cohen

About

Jonathan Cohen is the Robert Bendheim and Lynn Bendheim Thoman Professor in Neuroscience at Princeton University, affiliated with the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. His research focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying cognitive control and their disturbance in psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. Cognitive control refers to the ability to guide attention, thought, and action in accordance with goals or intentions. His work aims to develop mechanistically explicit hypotheses about the functioning of brain systems involved in cognitive control, including the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, basal ganglia, and brainstem neuromodulatory systems, and to test these hypotheses through empirical studies. A key motivation of his research is to establish a theoretically sound foundation for understanding how disturbances in brain function manifest as disorders of thought and behavior in psychiatric illnesses.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Cognitive science
• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Neuroscience
• Management science
• Econometrics
• Human–computer interaction
• Economics

Selected publications

• Measuring Time Preferences

  Journal of Economic Literature · 2020 · 338 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  We review research that measures time preferences-i.e., preferences over intertemporal tradeoffs. We distinguish between studies using financial flows, which we call "money earlier or later" (MEL) decisions and studies that use time-dated consumption/effort. Under different structural models, we show how to translate what MEL experiments directly measure (required rates of return for financial flows) into a discount function over utils. We summarize empirical regularities found in MEL studies an…

  DOI

• Rationalizing constraints on the capacity for cognitive control

  Trends in Cognitive Sciences · 2021 · 242 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Humans are remarkably limited in: (i) how many control-dependent tasks they can execute simultaneously, and (ii) how intensely they can focus on a single task. These limitations are universal assumptions of most theories of cognition. Yet, a rationale for why humans are subject to these constraints remains elusive. This feature review draws on recent insights from psychology, neuroscience, and machine learning, to suggest that constraints on cognitive control may result from a rational adaptatio…

  DOI

• People construct simplified mental representations to plan

  Nature · 2022 · 115 citations

  DOI

• Is Activity Silent Working Memory Simply Episodic Memory?

  Trends in Cognitive Sciences · 2021 · 98 citations

  DOI

• Major depression symptom severity associations with willingness to exert effort and patch foraging strategy

  Psychological Medicine · 2024-11-01 · 18 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Background Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) can experience reduced motivation and cognitive function, leading to challenges with goal-directed behavior. When selecting goals, people maximize ‘expected value’ by selecting actions that maximize potential reward while minimizing associated costs, including effort ‘costs’ and the opportunity cost of time. In MDD, differential weighing of costs and benefits are theorized mechanisms underlying changes in goal-directed cognitio…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01MH052864

  NIH · $2.9M · 2010

• NIH Grant P50MH045156

  NIH · $46.5M · 2009

• REU Site: Princeton Neuroscience Institute Summer Internship Program

  NSF · $346k · 2018–2023

Frequent coauthors

• Cameron S. Carter

  University of California, Davis

  113 shared

• Sebastian Musslick

  Osnabrück University

  78 shared

• Douglas C. Noll

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  78 shared

• Amitai Shenhav

  University of California System

  69 shared

• Todd S. Braver

  69 shared

• Matthew Botvinick

  66 shared

• Samuel M. McClure

  65 shared

• Deanna M. Barch

  Washington University in St. Louis

  65 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  Carnegie Mellon University

  1990

• Internship and Residency, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

  Stanford University

  1989

• M.D., Medical School

  University of Pennsylvania

  1983

• B.A., Philosophy and Biology

  Yale University

  1977

Awards & honors

• American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected)
• APS William James Award

Similar researchers at Princeton University

• Yael Nivh-81
• Sabine Kastnerh-80
• Uri Hassonh-74