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

    Anklebone kicks up primate debate

    The discoverers of a roughly 40-million-year-old anklebone in Myanmar say that it supports the controversial theory that anthropoids, a primate group that includes monkeys, apes, and humans, originated in Asia.

  2. Vision Seekers

    An investigation of school-age children who received cataract surgery after being blind from birth examines the extent to which these kids are able to perceive the visual world and the ways in which their brains respond to newfound sight.

  3. Whiffs of Perception: Sniffing activates the mind’s nose

    People spontaneously sniff while imagining various smells, an act that intensifies odor perception.

  4. Anthropology

    Europe’s Iceman was a valley guy

    The 5,200-year-old Iceman, whose mummified body was found 12 years ago in the Alps between Italy and Austria, spent his life in the valleys just south of where his body was found, according to chemical analyses of his remains.

  5. Forgetting to Remember: Emotion robs memory while reviving it

    A common biological mechanism may boost memory for emotional events and block recall for what happened just before those events occurred, at least over the short run.

  6. Anthropology

    Stone Age Code Red: Scarlet symbols emerge in Israeli cave

    Lumps of red ocher excavated near human graves in an Israeli cave indicate that symbolic thinking occurred at least 90,000 years ago, much earlier than archaeologists have traditionally assumed.

  7. IQ Yo-Yo: Test changes alter retardation diagnoses

    Mental retardation placements in U.S. schools rose dramatically in the first five years after a commonly used IQ test was revised, raising concerns about how IQ scores are used to diagnose mental retardation.

  8. Poor Relations: Casino windfall reveals poverty’s toll on Cherokee kids’ behavior

    A study of Indian families before and after they began receiving an annual financial windfall supports the theory that poverty undermines psychological health, at least among children.

  9. Anthropology

    Erectus Ahoy

    A researcher who explores the nautical abilities of Stone Age people by building rafts and having crews row them across stretches of ocean contends that language and other cognitive advances emerged 900,000 years ago with Homo erectus, not considerably later among modern humans, as is usually assumed.

  10. Neuroscience

    Restoring Recall: Memories may form and reform, with sleep

    Two new studies indicate that memories, at least for skills learned in a laboratory, undergo a process of storage and restorage that depends critically on sleep.

  11. Faint smells of schizophrenia

    A loss of the ability to tell different odors apart may represent an early sign of schizophrenia.

  12. Mothers reveal their baby faces

    Mothers in different cultures use three distinctive facial expressions to communicate with their infants.