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. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. Faces elicit strong emotions in autism

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

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. Math minus Grammar: Number skills survive language losses

    Three men who suffered left brain damage that undermined their capacity to speak and understand language still possessed a firm grip of mathematics.

  9. Lefties, righties take neural sides in perceiving parts

    A brain-imaging study indicates that right-handers and left-handers use different, corresponding neural regions to perceive parts of an object while ignoring the larger entity.

  10. Asian Kids’ IQ Lift: Reading system may boost Chinese scores

    A new study of Chinese and Greek kids suggests that a Chinese IQ advantage over Westerners stems from superior spatial abilities, possibly because the Chinese learn to read pictorial symbols that emphasize spatial perception.

  11. Anxieties stoke bipolar unrest

    Insomnia and other serious sleep difficulties plague many people with bipolar disorder, even after medications have eased their extreme mood swings.

  12. Anthropology

    Cultivating Revolutions

    New studies suggest that farmers spread from the Middle East throughout Europe beginning around 10,000 years ago in a multitude of small migrations that rapidly changed the continent's social and cultural landscape.