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. Anthropology

    Untangling Ancient Roots: Earliest hominid shows new, improved face

    New fossil finds and a digitally reconstructed skull bolster the claim that the oldest known member of the human evolutionary family lived in central Africa between 6 million and 7 million years ago.

  2. Animals

    DNA tells pigs’ tale of diverse ancestry

    A genetic study indicates that pigs were domesticated in at least seven different parts of Asia and Europe, not in just two regions, as many researchers had assumed.

  3. Babies Learn to Save Face: Infants get prepped to perceive

    A minimal amount of parent-directed training at home allows babies to sustain facial-discrimination skills that they would otherwise lose by age 9 months.

  4. College may endow memory to old brains

    College-educated older adults recruit new brain areas to counteract some of the memory loss that occurs with aging, a new brain-imaging study suggests.

  5. Possible Worlds

    A growing number of reports highlight imagination's pervasive influence on thinking, one example of which is the surprisingly large proportion of well-adjusted preschoolers who play with make-believe companions.

  6. Schizophrenia Syncs Fast: Disconnected brain may lie at heart of disorder

    A misalignment of electrical outbursts by large numbers of neurons may play a major role in schizophrenia.

  7. Monkey See, Monkey Think: Grape thefts instigate debate on primate’s mind

    Rhesus monkeys treat a competitor's averted eyes as a license to steal his or her food.

  8. Anthropology

    Inside view of our wee, ancient cousins

    A tiny, humanlike species that inhabited an Indonesian island more than 20,000 years ago possessed a brain that shared some organizational features with Homo erectus, a large-brained human ancestor that thought in complex ways.

  9. Faces elicit strong emotions in autism

    Children with autism avoid eye contact because they experience uncomfortably intense emotional reactions when looking at faces.

  10. Infectious Evolution: Ancient virus hit apes, not our ancestors, in the genes

    A potentially deadly infection wormed its way into the DNA of ancestral chimpanzees and gorillas between 4 million and 3 million years ago, thus altering the evolution of these African apes while keeping clear of human ancestors on that same continent.

  11. Archaeology

    Pottery points to ‘mother culture’

    The Olmec, a society that more than 3,000 years ago inhabited what is now Mexico's Gulf Coast, acted as a mother culture for communities located hundreds of miles away, according to a chemical analysis of pottery remains and local clays from ancient population sites in the area.

  12. Anthropology

    Human fossils are oldest yet

    Homo sapiens fossils found along Ethiopia's Omo River in 1967 date to 195,000 years ago, making them the oldest-known remains of our species.