Jonathan Cohen

Jonathan D. Cohen
Human Neuroscience ; Theory and Computation Human Neuroscience ; Theory and Computation

Robert Bendheim and Lynn Bendheim Thoman Professor in Neuroscience. Professor of Psychology, Co-Director Princeton Neuroscience Institute

Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, 1990
MD, University of Pennsylvania, 1983
Research: Focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying cognitive control, and their disturbance in psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and depression.
Areas of Research: Human Neuroscience; Theory and Computation
jdc@princeton.edu
Research Lab
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609-258-2696
240 Neuroscience

Research Focus

Research in my laboratory focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying cognitive control, and their disturbance in psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. Cognitive control is the ability to guide attention, thought and action in accord with goals or intentions. One of the fundamental mysteries of neuroscience is how this capacity for coordinated, purposeful behavior arises from the distributed activity of many billions of neurons in the brain. Several decades of cognitive and neuroscientific research have focused on the mechanisms by which control influences processing (e.g., attentional effects in sensory processing, goal directed sequencing of motor output, etc.), and the brain structures upon which these functions depend, such as the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, basal ganglia and brainstem neuromodulatory systems. However, we still have a poor understanding of how these systems give rise to cognitive control. Our work seeks to develop formally explicit hypotheses about the functioning of these systems, and to test these hypotheses in empirical studies. An important motivation for this work is the development of a theoretically sound foundation for research on the relationship between disturbances of brain function and their manifestation as disorders of thought and behavior in psychiatric illness.
 

Selected Publications

COMPUTATIONAL MODELING OF NEURAL MECHANISMS UNDERLYING COGNITIVE CONTROL:

NEUROIMAGING AND ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL STUDIES OF PREFRONTAL CORTEX AND ANTERIOR CINGULATE FUNCTION:

SCHIZOPHRENIA:

REWARD, EMOTION AND DECISION MAKING:

NEURAL NETWORK AND NEUROIMAGING METHODS: