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. Song Sung Blue: In brain, music and language overlap

    Different classical-music passages facilitate thinking about specific verbal categories, triggering brain responses previously seen only when people recognized related linguistic meanings.

  2. Archaeology

    How agriculture ground to a start

    A major advance in agriculture occurred around 11,000 years ago, when western Asians began to walk through patches of wild barley and wheat and scoop handfuls of ripened grains off the ground, a report suggests.

  3. Neural Aging Walks Tall: Aerobic activity fuels elderly brains, minds

    Moderate amounts of regular walking improve brain function and attention in formerly sedentary seniors.

  4. Anthropology

    Some Primates’ Sheltered Lives: Baboons, chimps enter the realm of cave

    In separate studies, researchers have gathered the first systematic evidence showing that baboons and chimpanzees regularly use caves, a behavior many anthropologists have attributed only to people and our direct ancestors.

  5. Anthropology

    European find gets Stone Age date

    A new radiocarbon analysis indicates that a skeleton found more than a century ago in an Italian cave dates to around 26,400 to 23,200 years ago.

  6. Monkeys heed neural calls of the wild

    A part of the brain that's involved in sound processing shows pronounced activity when rhesus monkeys hear their comrades vocalizing but not when the same animals hear other sounds.

  7. The Brain’s Word Act: Reading verbs revs up motor cortex areas

    A strip of brain tissue that regulates most voluntary movements also respond vigorously as people do nothing more than silently read active verbs.

  8. Unsure Minds

    A controversial set of studies indicates that monkeys and dolphins know when they don't know the answer to certain tasks, an ability that presumably relies on conscious deliberations.

  9. Juggling takes stage as brain modifier

    Marked volume increases occur in visual areas of the brain as people learn to juggle and then are partly reversed when the budding jugglers stop practicing their newfound skill, a brain-scan investigation finds.

  10. Archaeology

    Lion skeleton found in Egyptian tomb

    Archaeologists found the skeleton of a once-mummified lion at an Egyptian site dating to more than 2,000 years ago, confirming suspicions that lions were revered as sacred animals.

  11. Sleeper Effects: Slumber may fortify memory, stir insight

    In two separate studies, researchers found that a specific sleep stage may amplify recent memories and that sleep can inspire problem-solving insights.

  12. 9/11’s Fatal Road Toll: Terror attacks presaged rise in U.S. car deaths

    Federal data indicate that fear of flying after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks caused a second toll of lives on U.S. roads in the last three months of that year.