Joseph Wesley "Wes" Burgess is an American psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author who has written books on animal behavior (ethology), nonverbal communication, and human consciousness. His main contribution has been to the understanding of the mind and social relationships.
Early life and education Burgess was born in Dumas, Texas to Wes and Dorothea Burgess. His family moved to St. Louis Missouri where he graduated from Ladue Horton Watkins High School and took classes at the Academy of Science, St. Louis, Washington University in St. Louis, and the Saint Louis Zoo. Burgess earned his bachelor's degree and a literary award at Purdue University;Lafayette Indiana Journal and Courier, April 15, 1974, pp 19–20 he received a PhD in Zoology at North Carolina State University, and an M.D. from the University of Miami School of Medicine. Burgess completed medical internship, psychiatry residency, and chief residency at Stanford University Medical Center, winning the Northern California Psychiatric Society Research Award.Burgess, J. Wesley. Cognitive information processing in borderline personality disorder: A neuropsychiatric hypothesis. Jefferson Journal of Psychiatry, vol 8, no 2, pp 34–49, 1990.The Psychology of Entomology, Entomology at Purdue Newsletter, Fall, Department of Entomology, Purdue University 2003, p 7.
Career Burgess studied social behavior with Peter Witt under a National Science Foundation grant at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services,Burgess, J. Wesley and Witt, Peter. Spider webs: Design and engineering. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, vol 1, pp 322–335, 1976. and with Evelyn Shaw at the Stanford University Department of Biology.Burgess, J. Wesley and Shaw, Evelyn. Effects of acoustico-lateralis denervation in a facultative schooling fish: A nearest neighbor matrix analysis. Behavioral and Neural Biology, vol 33, pp 488–497, 1981. Burgess was then awarded a National Science Foundation research grant at the University of California, Davis where he did neuropsychology research and taught courses in the Department of Psychology.Burgess, J. Wesley, and Fordyce, Wendy K. Effects of preschool environments on nonverbal social behavior. Child Psychology and Psychiatry, vol 30, pp 261–276, 1989. He accepted a National Science Foundation research fellowship with Jaime Villablanca to study brain and behavior and teach classes at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the UCLA School of Medicine.Burgess, J. Wesley. Do humans exhibit "species-typical" group size? Age, sex, and environmental differences in the size and composition of natural groups. Ethology and Sociobiology, vol 4, pp 149–155, 1984. During his residency, he led a suicide crisis hotline and student psychotherapy groups, and taught classes at Stanford University.Burgess, J. Wesley, and Zarcone, Vincent P. Cognitive Impairment in dramatic personality disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry, vol 149, p 136, 1992. Burgess maintained a private medical practice in adult and adolescent neuropsychiatry for over 20 years in Brentwood, Los Angeles, specializing in mood disorders and personality disorders.Burgess, Wes. Clinical Case Conference: A monthly featured column on diagnosis and treatment. Southern California Psychiatrist, 2003–2009. He was a consultant for the State Bar of California and the Los Angeles Superior Court, and he has been a guest on National Public Radio, television, and films.Burgess, Wes. The Mental Status Examination for Personality Disorders. Volume 2 of the Mental Status Examination Series. CreateSpace, 2013. Burgess now devotes his time to writing and private consultation in Half Moon Bay, California, where he teaches at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve.Between the Tides, June, p 4, 2017
Scientific contributions Burgess was the first United States scientist to discover social spiders,Burgess, J. Wesley. Social Spiders. Scientific American, vol 234, pp 99–106, 1976. which he described in Scientific American and other journals.Burgess, J. Wesley. Social spiders. In Howard Topoff, editor, Animal Societies and Evolution. Freeman Press, San Francisco, 1981.Burgess, J. Wesley. Social behavior in group-living spider species. In Peter Merrett, editor, Arachnology. Symposia, Zoological Society of London, Number. 42. Academic Press, London, 1978. Social spiders challenge theories of social biology because spiders are usually cannibalistic and would not be expected to form social groups. Burgess showed how social spiders modify their environment to be able to live together.Witt, Peter N. and Burgess, J. Wesley. Spider webs: Design and engineering. Naturwissenschafteliche Rundschau, vol 31, pp 269–282, 1978. For example, Mexican spiders called Mallos gregalis spin a web that amplifies the sounds of the flies that they eat and dampens the vibrations made by other spiders, allowing Mallos spiders to live in colonies containing hundreds of thousands of individuals.Burgess, J. Wesley. Web-signal processing for tolerance and group predation in the social spider Mallos gregalis. Animal Behavior, vol 27, pp 157–164, 1979. Another spider called Metepeira spinipes, spins two-part spider webs: individual orbs to catch prey, and vibration-damping tangled webs where spiders coexist peacefully.Burgess, J. Wesley, and Uetz, George. Social spacing strategies in spiders. In Peter N. Witt and Jerome Rovner, Editors, Spider Communication: Mechanisms and Ecological Significance. Princeton University Press, pp 317–352, 1982.Uetz, George and Burgess, J. Wesley. Habitat structure and colonial behavior in Metepeira spinipes. Psyche, vol 86, pp 79–89, 1979. Burgess also described Oecobius civitas spiders who exchange individual webs with each other as part of a unique prober/retaliator social strategy (see evolutionary game theory).Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 2006.
Burgess compared the biological forces that produce social groups in shoaling and schooling fish, flocking and territorial birds, monkey colonies, and human social groups; developing techniques of pattern recognition for measuring and displaying proxemic distances between k-nearest neighbor individuals in a social group.Burgess, J. Wesley. Measurement of spacing behavior. Behavioral and Neural Biology, vol 26, pp 132–160, 1979.
Burgess found similar subgrouping patterns in rhesus monkey colonies in Puerto Rico, while working at the North Carolina Department of Mental Health Research.Burgess, J. Wesley. Group spacing in rhesus monkey troops: Environmental factors. Behavioral and Neural Biology, vol 30, pp 49–55, 1980. These patterns change if only a few members receive psychoactive drugs.Burgess, J. Wesley, Witt, Peter N., Phoebus, E., and Weisbard, Charles. The spacing of rhesus monkey troops changes when a few members receive THC or amphetamine. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, vol 13, pp 121–124, 1980.
Burgess’ studies revealed how the dendrites of brain neurons grow during development.Burgess, J. Wesley, Monachello, Mark, and McGinn, Mike. Early development of spiny neurons in fish and mouse: Morphometric measures of dendritic spine formation. Developmental Brain Research, vol 6, pp 123–129, 1982.Berard, Dale, Burgess, J. Wesley, and Coss, Richard. Plasticity of dendritic spine formation: A state-dependent developmental process. International Journal of Neuroscience, vol 12, pp 93–98, 1981. Together with Richard Coss at the University of California, Davis, Burgess was the first to show that sensory stimuli, including social stressors, can cause long-lasting changes in brain cell anatomical structure in just a few minutes.Burgess, J. Wesley, and Coss, Richard. Rapid effects of biologically relevant stimulation on tectal neurons: Changes in dendritic spine morphology after 9 minutes are retained for 24 hours. Brain Research, vol 266, pp 217–233, 1983. Together with Jaime Villablanca at UCLA, Burgess discovered that early brain injury resembling childhood congenital disorders and adult traumatic brain injury can heal naturally and that rehabilitative exercise improves brain healing.Burgess, J. Wesley, Villablanca, J. R., and Levine, Micheal. Recovery of function after neonatal or adult hemispherectomy: Complex functions. Behavioural Brain Research, vol 20, pp 217–230, 1986.Burgess, J. Wesley and Villablanca, J. R. Recovery of function after neonatal or adult hemispherectomy. Motor deficits: limb bias and development, paw usage, locomotion, and rehabilitative effects of exercise. Behavioural Brain Research, vol 20, pp 1–18, 1986.Villablanca, J. R., Burgess, J. Wesley, and Benedetti, Fabricio. There is less thalamic degeneration in neonatal-lesioned than in adult-lesioned cats after cerebral hemispherectomy. Brain Research, vol 368, pp 211–225, 1986.Villablanca, J. R., Burgess, J. Wesley, and Olmstead, Charles. Recovery of function after neonatal or adult hemispherectomy in cats. Time course, movement, posture and sensory tests. Behavioural Brain Research, vol 19, pp 205–226, 1986.Villablanca, J. R.; Burgess, J. Wesley; and Sonnier, B. J. Neonatal cerebral hemispherectomy: A model for post lesion reorganization of the brain. In C. Robert Almli and S. Finger, Editors, The Behavioral Biology of Early Brain Damage, Volume II. Academic Press, New York, pp 179–210, 1984. He helped clarify the rôle of the caudate nucleus in aggression and found that, without input from this nucleus, usually aggressive cats are friendly and affiliative. Burgess also contributed to our understanding of how the nervous system responds to morphine,de Andres, Isabel, Villablanca, J. R., and Burgess, J. Wesley. Reassessing morphine effects in cats: Protracted effects on sleep-wakefulness and EEG. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, vol 21, pp 922–928, 1984.Harris, Cynthia, Villablanca, J. R., Burgess, J. Wesley, and de Andres, Isabel. Reassessing morphine effects in cats: Responses of intact, caudate nuclei-lesioned and hemispherectomized animals following chronic administration and precipitated withdrawal. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, vol 21, pp 929–926, 1984.Villablanca, J. R., Harris, Cynthia, Burgess, J. Wesley, and de Andres, Isabel. Reassessing morphine effects in cats: Specific neurobehavioral responses in intact and unilaterally brain-lesioned cats. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, vol 21, pp 913–921, 1984. especially during early development.Burgess, J. Wesley, and Villablanca, J. R. Ontogenesis of morphine-induced behavior in the cat. Journal of Brain Research, vol 1134, pp 53–61, 2007.
Medical contributions