Laura Sanders

Laura Sanders

Senior Writer, Neuroscience

Laura Sanders reports on neuroscience for Science News. She wrote Growth Curve, a blog about the science of raising kids, from 2013 to 2019 and continues to write about child development and parenting from time to time. She earned her Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she studied the nerve cells that compel a fruit fly to perform a dazzling mating dance. Convinced that she was missing some exciting science somewhere, Laura turned her eye toward writing about brains in all shapes and forms. She holds undergraduate degrees in creative writing and biology from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where she was a National Merit Scholar. Growth Curve, her 2012 series on consciousness and her 2013 article on the dearth of psychiatric drugs have received awards recognizing editorial excellence.

All Stories by Laura Sanders

  1. Humans

    Babies learn words before birth

    Brain responses suggest infants can distinguish distinct words from altered versions that they learned in the womb.

  2. Calling neuroscience pointless misses the point

    Despite the adage, there actually is such a thing as bad publicity, a fact that brain scientists have lately discovered. A couple of high-profile opinion pieces in the New York Times have questioned the usefulness of neuroscience, claiming, as columnist David Brooks did in June, that studying brain activity will never reveal the mind. Or […]

  3. Psychology

    Blood marker may predict suicide

    People who killed themselves had higher levels of a gene involved in cell death.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Racial homogeneity in early childhood may affect brain

    In lab study, kids who lived in single-race orphanages have difficulty interpreting emotions on faces with foreign features.

  5. Life

    Envisioning a fly brain

    A new map of the fruit fly brain shows how the insect detects motion.

  6. Neuroscience

    Caffeine shakes up growing mouse brains

    When pregnant mice consumed caffeine, their offspring had altered neurons and faulty memory.

  7. Neuroscience

    One sleepless night weakens resolve in the face of doughnuts

    Sleep loss changes brain activity and food preferences.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Space-mapping neurons found in human brain

    Grid cells may orient people in Euclidean space.

  9. Life

    Tigers meet, mix in forest corridors

    In India, narrow strips of wild land connect small groups of cats.

  10. Health & Medicine

    Smoking damages mouse brains

    Signs of Alzheimer’s disease appear after the rodents breathe cigarette smoke.

  11. Health & Medicine

    A surprise makes memories wobbly

    Drug that interferes with recollection works only when people face the unexpected.

  12. Humans

    Newborn babies walk the walk

    Infants strut a runway wearing electrodes to show how the walking reflex works.