Barry H. Cohen, Ph.D.
Applied Psychology Adjunct Faculty
About
Barry H. Cohen is a research affiliate in the Steinhardt school, and, along with Joshua Aronson, he directs the Mindful Education Lab. Recently, he retired as a clinical associate professor, and had been director of NYU's GSAS M.A. program in psychology for more than a decade. He has taught statistics and research design at the graduate level for more than 25 years, and is the author of three statistics text books currently in print. He received a B.S. in physics from Stony Brook University, an M.A. in general psychology from Queens College, and a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from NYU. He completed two years of post-doctoral research under the guidance of Richard Davidson at Purchase College in New York. His current research is focused in two main areas: the subjective and neural correlates of inner speech; and the cognitive, affective, and physiological changes produced by the regular practice of meditation and related mental exercises.
Publications
Cohen, B. H., & Zhang, B. (2026). Cortical activity increases in speech motor areas as a function of the subjective loudness of inner speech. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 20, 1812507. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2026.1812507
Cohen, B. H. (2025). Mental pain, boredom, and diffuse nociception. Psychology of Consciousness, 12(3), 305-324. https://doi.org/10.1037/cns0000405
Siegel, P., Cohen, B. H., & Warren, R. (2022). Nothing to fear but fear itself: A mechanistic test of unconscious exposure. Biological Psychiatry, 91, 294-302. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2021.08.022
Bellehsen, M., Stoycheva, V., Cohen, B. H., & Nidich, S. (2022). A pilot randomized controlled trial of Transcendental Meditation as treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder in veterans. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 35(1), 22-31. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.22665
Travis, F., Nash, J., Parim, N., & Cohen, B. H. (2020). Does the MRI/fMRI procedure itself confound the results of meditation research? An evaluation of subjective and neurophysiological measures of TM practitioners in a simulated MRI environment. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 728. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00728
Cohen, B.H. (2017). Why the resistance to statistical innovations? A comment on Sharpe (2013). Psychological Methods, 22, 204-210.
Cohen, B.H. (2013). Explaining Psychological Statistics (4th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Cohen, B.H. (2002). Calculating a factorial ANOVA from means and standard deviations. Understanding Statistics, 1, 191-203.
Demarais, A. & Cohen, B.H. (1998). Evidence for image-scanning eye movements during transitive inference. Biological Psychology, 49, 229-247.
Cohen, B.H., et al. (1992). Muscle tension patterns during auditory attention. Biological Psychology, 33, 133-156.
Cohen, B.H. (1986). The Motor Theory of Voluntary Thinking. In R.J. Davidson, G.E. Schwartz, and D. Shapiro (Eds.), Consciousness and self-regulation (Vol. 4, pp. 19-54). New York: Plenum Press.
