Bruce Bower

Bruce Bower

Behavioral Sciences Writer

Bruce Bower has written about the behavioral sciences since 1984. He often writes about psychology, anthropology, archaeology and mental health issues. Bruce has a master's degree in psychology from Pepperdine University and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. Following an internship at Science News in 1981, he worked as a reporter at Psychiatric News, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association, until joining Science News as a staff writer. In 1996, the American Psychological Association appointed Bruce a Science Writer Fellow, with a grant to visit psychological scientists of his own choosing. Early stints as an aide in a day school for children and teenagers with severe psychological problems and as a counselor in a drug diversion center provided Bruce with a surprisingly good background for a career in science journalism.

All Stories by Bruce Bower

  1. Intrinsic Remedies for Pain: Placebo effect may take various paths in brain

    The brain draws on a range of pain-fighting options when people receive sham treatments for pain.

  2. Archaeology

    Getting a read on early Maya writing

    Excavators of a pyramid in northeastern Guatemala announced the discovery of the earliest known Maya writing.

  3. Masters of Disaster: Survey taps resilience of post-9/11 New York

    Telephone interviews with more than 2,700 people living in and around New York City yielded evidence of widespread psychological resilience during the 6 months after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

  4. Archaeology

    Stone Age Britons pay surprise visit

    Estimated to be roughly 700,000 years old, stone tools recently unearthed along England's southeastern coast are the earliest evidence of human ancestors in northern Europe.

  5. Anthropology

    Stone Age Footwork: Ancient human prints turn up down under

    An ancient, dried-up lakeshore in Australia has yielded the largest known collection of Stone Age footprints, made about 20,000 years ago.

  6. Anthropology

    European face-off for early farmers

    A new analysis of modern and ancient human skulls supports the idea that early farmers in the Middle East spread into Europe between 11,000 and 6,500 years ago, intermarried with people there, and passed on their agricultural way of life to the native Europeans.

  7. Humans

    Irreplaceable Perplexity 101

    An imaginary classroom provides lessons on the all-too-real debate over evolution and intelligent design.

  8. Brain Training Puts Big Hurt on Intense Pain: Volunteers learn to translate imaging data into neural-control tool

    Using brain-imaging technology, researchers have trained people to control activity in a pain-related brain area by using mental techniques, thus enabling them to reduce the intensity of temporary or chronic pain.

  9. Mirror Cells’ Fading Spark: Empathy-related neurons may turn off in autism

    Brain cells implicated in the ability to imitate and empathize with others largely fail to function in children with autism, a new brain-imaging investigation suggests.

  10. Anthropology

    The Pirahã Challenge

    A linguist has sparked controversy with his proposal that a tribe of about 200 people living in Brazil's Amazon rain forest speaks a language devoid of counting and color terms, clauses, and other elements of grammar often considered to be universal.

  11. Anthropology

    Waves of Grain: New data lift old model of agriculture’s origins

    A new analysis of the locations and ages of ancient farming sites reinforces the controversial idea that the groups that started raising crops in the Middle East gradually grew in number and colonized much of Europe.

  12. DNA Clues to Our Kind: Regulatory gene linked to human evolution

    A gene that exerts wide-ranging effects on the brain works harder in people than it does in chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates.