Joseph Wesley "Wes" Burgess is an American psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author who has written books on animal behavior (ethology), nonverbal communication, and human consciousness.
[10][11][12] Burgess now devotes his time to writing and private consultation in Half Moon Bay, California, where he teaches at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve.
[19][20] 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).
[22] Burgess found similar subgrouping patterns in rhesus monkey colonies in Puerto Rico, while working at the North Carolina Department of Mental Health Research.
[25][26] 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.
[37][38][12][39] He showed that the pathology of borderline personality disorder, including chronic depression and self harm, is linked to impaired neurocognition—the ability to perform normal thought processes.