Client details

I am a developmental cognitive neuroscientist, which is a long-winded way of saying that I study children’s thinking and how their developing brain influences their thoughts and actions. After completing my Ph.D. at Cambridge, I spent one year in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science at MIT and then become an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard. I returned to the UK to take the Chair in Developmental Psychology at Bristol and in 2001, I established the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre. I have a number of professional gongs including Young Investigator Award 1998 (International Society for Infant Studies), American Psychology Society Robert L. Fantz award 1999 and Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Neuroscience 1997-1999. In 2005, I was elected a Fellow of the American Psychological Society.

 I am also actively involved in the public engagement of science and have been appointed by the Royal Institution of Great Britain to give the 2011 Christmas Lecture series entitled, "Meet Your Brain" to be broadcast by the BBC. In 2009, I published a book about the developmental origins of adult supernatural beliefs called “SuperSense: Why We Believe the Unbelievable” (HarperOne) in the US and 9 other countries.

Bruce is currently working on his latest book THE SELF ILLUSION which is to be published by Constable and Robinson in the UK and OUP in the US.

THE SELF ILLUSION 

Cutting edge developmental psychology and neuroscience herald a mind-boggling fact: the self you experience as a unified, integrated individual inside your head and in control of your body is not what it seems. Hood argues that the self is actually constructed from a multitude of mental processes that generate the impression of an individual but it is really a product of a brain that has evolved to create a multifaceted character that can interact socially with others.