10 Facts About Neil Cohn

Neil Cohn is an American cognitive scientist and comics theorist.

Neil Cohn's research focuses on the cognition of understanding comics, and uses an interdisciplinary approach combining aspects of theoretical and corpus linguistics with cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

Neil Cohn's research has examined the comprehension and linguistic status of emoji.

Neil Cohn began developing his theories as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley where he graduated in 2002.

Neil Cohn then spent several years as an independent scholar before studying under linguist Ray Jackendoff and psychologists Gina Kuperberg and Phillip Holcomb at Tufts University where he received his PhD in psychology in 2012.

Neil Cohn then did a postdoctoral fellowship at UC San Diego working with Marta Kutas and Jeff Elman.

Neil Cohn is the son of Leigh Cohn and Lindsey Hall.

Neil Cohn argues that language involves an interaction between an expressive modality, meaning, and a grammar.

In 2020, Neil Cohn was awarded a Starting Grant from the European Research Council to study cross-cultural diversity in the structures of the visual languages used in comics around the world by building a multicultural corpus of annotated comics, and to examine the relationship of those structures to those in spoken languages.

Neil Cohn began working in the comic industry at age 14 by helping to run convention booths for Image Comics and Todd McFarlane Productions throughout his teenage years.