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. Questions on the Couch

    A new policy statement on evidence-based practice from the American Psychological Association illustrates the intense struggle among researchers and clinicians over how best to study the effectiveness of psychotherapy in its many forms.

  2. Left Out by a Stroke: Right-brain injury may upset attention balance

    People who suddenly ignore everything to their left after suffering a right-brain stroke display disturbed activity in uninjured parts of a widespread neural network associated with attention.

  3. Early Stress in Rats Bites Memory Later On: Inadequate care to young animals delivers delayed hit to the brain

    The stress of receiving poor maternal care for a short period after birth comes back to haunt rats by stimulating memory losses and related brain disturbances in middle age.

  4. Anthropology

    Encore for Evolutionary Small-Timers: Tiny human cousins get younger with new finds

    Excavations in an Indonesian cave have yielded more fossils of short, upright creatures that lived as recently as 12,000 years ago.

  5. Anthropology

    Wild gorillas take time for tool use

    Gorillas that balance on walking sticks and trudge across makeshift bridges have provided the first evidence of tool use among these creatures in the wild.

  6. Archaeology

    Q Marks the Spot: Recent find fingers long-sought Maya city

    A hieroglyphic-covered stone panel discovered at an ancient Maya site in Guatemala last April adds weight to suspicions that the settlement was Site Q, an enigmatic city about which researchers have long speculated.

  7. Brains disconnect as people sleep

    Rather than turning off completely during sleep, the brain shuts down communication among structures that make up neural networks.

  8. Concentrated Guidance: Attention training gives kids a cognitive push

    A brief course on how to pay attention boosts children's scores on either intelligence or attention tests, depending on their age.

  9. Meds Alert: Old schizophrenia drug stands up to new ones

    A new, much-touted generation of antipsychotic drugs generally yields no more improvement in people with schizophrenia than an older, cheaper antipsychotic medication does.

  10. Anthropology

    Genes tied to recent brain evolution

    Two genes already known to influence brain size have undergone relatively recent, survival-enhancing modifications in people and appear to be still evolving.

  11. Childhood’s End

    In northern Thailand, parents send one or more of their daughters off to become prostitutes so that the girls will make enough money to improve the local status of their families, a finding with implications for programs aimed at stopping child prostitution.

  12. Noises On, Language Off: Speech impairment linked to unsound perception

    A language disorder that affects a substantial number of elementary school children arises from a difficulty in picking out basic elements of speech, such as consonants, from streams of sound.